sses©£«se^? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 




UNITED STATES OF AMERSCA. 



/ 

6^/,^. 



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SPEECH ^^^^ 

ON THE ^^tJt 



SCHOOL QUESTION 



DELIVERED BY 



/ 

ZACH MONTGOMERY, 



Before the Convention Committee on Education, in 

THE Assembly Chamber at Sacramento City, 

November 20, 1878. 



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OAKLAND, CAI-. 
187 9. 



U e 



•lip 



SPEECH ON THE SCHOOL QUESTION 



BY 



ZACH. MONTGOMERY, 



Gentlemen of the Committee, Members of the Convention 

AND FeLLOW-CoUNTRTMEN: 
In presenting myself before you this evening, to address you 
on the school question, it is but proper for me to state that I am 
not here as the representative of any creed, party, or class of men^ 
or women. I am here upon my individual responsibility, the vol- | 
unteer advocate of the dearest rights, and the highest, and deepest, ; 
and broadest interests of every man, woman, and child in this ^ 
country. I stand here to plead the cause of tens of thousands of 
people, who, misled by a false-tongued Press, look upon me almost 
in the light of a public enemy, seeking, by a division of the publio 
school moneys on a sectarian basis, to appropriate to the Catholio 
Church the funds which of right belong to themselves, and ought 
to go toward the education of their own children. Sometimes, too, 
the timidity of friends does almost as much to deepen this falsa 
impression as does the open slander of enemies. My record for the 
last eighteen years on the school question is before the country, 
and I defy any man, friend or foe, tcv point his finger to the sen- 
tence, the word, or the syllable I have ever uttered in advocacy of 
dividing the school fund on a sectarian basis, or any other than a 
parental basis, without distinction of creeds, parties, or factions 
The views I come here to express are simply my own. I have had 



2 State vs. Parental Education. 

no pre-arrangemeiit with any human being with reference to the 
matter. Nobody but myself at this moment knows what I intend 
to say, and consequently nobody but myself has a right to be held 
responsible for what I shall say. As the basis for my remarks, 
here are five propositions which I should like to see recognized and 
approved in some shape, either in the Bill of Rights, or elsewhere 
in the new Constitution. 

I. The fathers and mothers of children, by the act of taking 
upon themselves the duties of the parental office, become bound 
to feed, clothe, and educate their own children. 

II. No Government has the right to tax its citizens to pay 
for the food, the clothing, or the education of children whose parents 
have the ability themselves to feed, clothe, and educate them. 

III. To aid in supplying with necessary food, clothing, and 
education, the children of parents who cannot themselves sufficiently 
supply these necessaries, is a public duty. 

IV. It is the inalienable right and duty of parents to select 
for the education of their own children, schools wherein they con- 
scientiously believe that neither the teachers, the books, nor the 
associations are such as to endanger the morals of their children. 

V. The true principle of religious liberty forbids the Govern- 
ment to discriminate for or against any of its citizens on account 
of their religious belief ; and it would be a gross violation of this 
principle — other things being equal — ^for the Government to with- 
hold from any of its indigent children, necessary food, clothing, or 
education, upon the sole ground that the parents or guardians of 
such children, in obedience to the dictates of their own consciences, 
choose to place such children in the hands of religious persons, and 
under religious training and influences, rather than in the hands 
of non-religious persons, and under non-religious training and 
influences. 

In the discussion of this educational question, — just as in dis- 
cussing any other question — it will be necessary, in order to under- 
stand each other, and fairly to compare views, remove differences, 
and arrive at common conclusions, to see, in the first place, how 
far we can agree in our premises. Now I presume we shall all 
agree in this proposition, namely: That as a rule — ah things else 
being equal — ;just in proportion as you extend the area of a proper 
education among the people, in the same proportion will you dimin- 
ish crime with all of its frightful train of resultant evils, such as 



State vs. Parental Education. 3 

pauperism, insanity, suicides, and the oppressive burdens of taxa- 
tion. But do you diminish crime, pauperism, insanity, suicides, 
and the oppressive burdens of taxation, in proportion as you extend 
the area of what is known as the New England Public School 
education? Let us deliberately examine this question, and if, after 
a calm, careful, and unbiased consideration of all the facts and fig- 
ures bearing on this subject, you can put your hands upon your 
hearts and say, yes, then for God's sake I beseech you to so hedge 
in and guard this system of education by constitutional barriers, 
that neither religious sects nor political parties — neither judges, nor 
legislators, nor governors, can ever lay violent hands upon it. 

But, on the other hand^ should you find that instead of dimin- 
ishing crime, pauperism, insanity, suicides, and the oppressive bur- 1 
dens of taxation, its tendency is exactly in the opposite direction; | 
if you find that the more money you invest in this particular kind I 
of education, the more you have to pay for arresting and trying | 
criminals, building jails and penitentiaries, feeding and clothing | 
paupers and insane persons; if you find that instead of a shield for I 
your protection it is a sword for your destruction, then I would | 
say, let that sword, if possible, be moulded into such shield, but if ' 
not possible, then let it be broken into flinders. Now, startling as 
may seem the proposition, I propose to demonstrate by incontestible 
^ facts and figures that every dollar paid out for the support of this 
^- system of feducation tends directly not to dimhiish but to increase 
crime, with all its endless train of attendant evils. But let facts 
speak for themselves. 

In order to thoroughly test the merits of this educational sys- 
tem, let us go back to its fountain-head, to the old commonwealth 
where it was first planted, where it has been the most industriously 
cultivated, where money has been the most lavishly expended for 
its support, and where the largest portion of the people have been 
brought under its influence; to that commonwealth to which the 
enthusiastic friends and admirers of this system are forever point- 
ing with pride and exultation, as the grandest field of its achieve- 
ments. I mean the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the year 
1647, now 231 years ago, the Colony of Massachusetts enacted a 
law making it obligatory upon all the children of the Colony to be 
educated, in part at least, at public expense. Thus early did she 
plant deep and firm in her virgin soil this boasted system. At the 
same time, Virginia, just then starting on her career of colonial 



4 State vs. Parental Education- 

existence, with apparently less solicitude for the general diffusion 
of book learning than for the preservation of individual rights, the 
perpetuity of parental authority, and the maintenance intact of 
the family government, was content to leave the right and duty of 
educating children in the hands of their parents, where the God of 
Nature, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, has seen proper to 
place them. It is true that she, from time to time, appropriated 
small sums of money to aid in the education of the poor; but while 
doing this, she did not attempt in exchange for her money, to rob 
parents of their God-given right to select, each for his own children, 
the school wherein they were to be educated. In other words, she 
^adopted the parental instead of the State system of education. 

In almost every other essential particular, the Colony of Mas- 
sachusetts and that of Virginia started on their respective careers 
of existence under auspices entirely similar. Both were new colo- 
nies, the one planted in 1607, and the other in 1620. Both were 
pioneers of civilization in the then savage wilds of America. Both 
were composed of English settlers — brave, industrious, intelligent, 
enterprising people ; people speaking the same language, accus- 
tomed to the same laws, manners, and usages; reading the same 
Bible and professing the Protestant religion. 

For more than 200 years, down to the time of our late terrible 
and bloody civil war, each of these two commonwealths respectively 
retained, in substance at least, its original plan of dealing with this 
educational question; the one acting upon the theory that it was 
primarily the business of the State, and the other on the theory 
that it was primarily the duty of the parents to educate children. 

Since the war, however, the Massachusetts educational system 
has, I believe, for good or for evil, with some modifications, diffused 
itself over every inch of United States soil. So that in order to 
fairly estimate the comparative results of the two systems, we shall 
let Massachusetts and Virgiuia compare accounts as they stood in 
1860, immediately preceding the late war. And in order to be 
entirely fair, we shall, in making our estimates, exclude both negroes 
and foreigners, and deal exclusively with native-born whites. I 
shall quote from the official reports of the United States Census 
Marshal for 1860, under the head of mortality and miscellaneous 
statistics, pages 508-512. 

In an educational point of view, so far as the matter of read- 
ing and writing were concerned, it must be admitted that Massa- 



Btate vs. Parental Education. 5 

chusetts with her State system made a most brilliant and triumph- 
ant showing, compared with that of Virginia's parental system. 
At the date referred to, out of a native white population of 970,- 
952, Massachusetts had but 2,004, that is to say, one to every 484 
native white adults who could neither read nor write, while Vir- 
ginia, with a native white population of 1,070,395, had 83,300, or 
one to every twelve who could neither read nor write; being a 
difference of forty illiterates to one in proportion to population as 
against Virginia. So that if the people of Massachusetts were 
properly educated, we might reasonably have expected to find in 
Virginia, in proportion to population, forty times as many criminals 
as in Massachusetts. But, instead of that, there were at the date 
referred to in Massachusetts 1,495 native white criminals in prison, 
being one to every 649 native white inhabitants ; while Virginia had 
but 163 native white prisoners, or one to every 6,566. That is to say, 
in proportion to her native white population, Massachusetts had, 
as the fruit of her State system, more than ten times as many 
criminals as had Virginia with her parental system of education. 
At the same date Massachusetts had 5,206 native white pau- 
pers, being one to 186 of her native white inhabitants, while Vir- 
ginia had but 4,300, being only one to every 247 of her native 
white inhabitants, making nearly double as many native white 
paupers in Massachusetts, in proportion to her population, as there 
were in Virginia. Of suicides, Massachusetts had 110, or one to 
every 11,191 of all classes, while Virginia had but 30, being one to 
every 53,210. In the matter of suicides, there was no separate 
estimate of the natives either for Virginia or Massachusetts ; of 
the insane I have found no report for 1860, but I have that for 
1870, from which it appears that Massachusetts had native insane 
persons, 1,446, being one to every 756 native inhabitants, while 
Virginia had but 1,082 being one to every 1,119 native inhabitants 
— a difference of about two to three "in favor of Virginia. 

Of deaths by syphilis Massachusetts had 26, being one to every 
47,348, while Virginia had but 9, being one to every 177,368. To 
recapitulate: After two hundred years' trial, your Massachusetts i 
State system produced annually, in proportion to her population^ j 
ten times as many native white criminals, nearly twice as many | 
native white paupers, four times as many suicides of all classes, more 
than three times as many deaths from syphilis, and one and a half 
times as many insane persons as did the parental system of Vii ginia. 



6 State vs. Parental Education. 

Then tell me what superior advantage Massachusetts has de- 
rived over Virginia from her anti-parental system of education? 
Is it found in the greater number and ability of her statesmen, in 
the superior eloquence of her orators, or in the greater courage, 
skill and heroic achievements of her warriors? 

It is undoubtedly true that Massachusetts has given to our 
country some of its very brightest and ablest literary men. The 
names of Prescott, Everett, and Bancroft — all students of Harvard 
University — and of William CuUen Bryant, who studied at Wil- 
liams College, and of many other illustrious children of the old 
Bay State, are familiar as household words, and are pronounced 
with just pride wherever the English language is spoken; but it 
would be difficult to trace the literary greatness of one of these 
distinguished men to public school training. 

It is also true that Massachusetts gave birth to the illustrious 
Benjamin Franklin; but he was far more indebted for his education 
to his own mighty intellect, his indomitable perseverance, and the 
training of a Philadelphia printing-office, than to the public schools 
of his native State. It is equally true that Massachusetts has given 
to the country two of its Presidents, the elder and the younger 
Adams. But it is no less true that they, too, were both educated 
at Harvard University, an institution which owes its origin rather 
to the private munificence of an Englishman than to the bounty 
of the State of Massachusetts. But as against these and a few 
lesser lights bom upon the soil of Massachusetts, look at old Vir- 
ginia's bright and glorious galaxy of statesmen, orators, and mili- 
tary heroes ! look at the long line of illustrious Presidents she has 
given to the Republic, beginning with the immortal Washington, 
the " Father of his Country," f oUowed by Jefferson, Madison, Mon- 
roe, Harrison, Tyler, and the unconquerable old "Rough and Ready," 
the hero of Buena Vista. It was she who gave to our country the 
author of the world-renowned Declaration of American Independ- 
ence. It was she who gave us that matchless orator, the incom- 
parable Patrick Henry, whose burning eloquence fired the American 
heart with the thrilling sentiments of that noble Declarp.tion. To 
her belongs the honor of having given us the General-in-Chief to 
lead our half -famishing and half -naked armies triumphantly through 
the terrible and bloody war of the Revolution. 

And when engaged in our more recent struggle with a neigh- 
boring Republic, they were Virginia's chosen sons, Zachary Taylor 



State vs. Parental Education. 7 

and Winiield Scott, who carried our victorious arms in triumph 
into the very Capital City of Mexico, and won for us this Golden 
State, whose destinies you, gentlemen, now hold in your hands. 
Then, again, when our late terrible civil war burst upon the country, 
there stood at the head of each opposing host a child of old Vir- 
ginia; and throughout that fearful contest did the military prowess 
of the Old Dominion shine forth in all its pristine splendor. 

However widely men may honestly differ as to the merits of 
that contest, there is no difference of opinion as to the manly cour- 
age, the splendid generalship and the dauntless heroism of General 
Lee, of Stonewall Jackson, Turner Ashby, A. P. Hill, Joseph E. 
Johnston, and a host of other Confederate Generals, whose earliest 
footprints were marked upon the soil of old Virginia. 

And against this mighty galaxy of generals whom Virginia 
gave to the Confederate cause, what did Massachusetts do for the 
other side? Why, she gave you the Union-sliding Banks and the 
bottled-up Benjamin F. Butler, which last was not her own child 
by the by, but one who, like the great Daniel Webster, had been i 
imported from the granite hills of New Hampshire. ..— -Jf 

But I shall now go still farther in my arraignment of this anti-~ 
parental Massachusetts system of education — in doing which I 
shall ask you to turn to the United States census reports for 1860, 
and take on the one hand the six New England States — namely, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, 
and Vermont — in every one of which the Massachusetts system of 
education has been in force from the very beginning of its existence. 
Then take the six States of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, 
North Carolina, and South Carolina, in none of which States did 
this system obtain a footing until a comparatively recent date ; and 
you will find, upon comparison, that that particular New England 
State which with her Massachusetts system of education had the 
very smallest proportion of native white criminals, had nearly 
twice as many as that State which, under the parental system had 
the very largest proportion. For it will appear that Vermont the 
least wicked of all the New England States, had one native white 
criminal to every 3,259 inhabitants, while South Carolina, the most 
criminal of all the other six States mentioned, had but one native 
white criminal to every 5,110 native white inhabitants; thus prov- 
ing that the very best kind of New England anti-parental educa- 
tion turns loose upon the country nearly twice as many criminals 



8 State vs. Parental Education. 

as does the very worst kind of education under the parental system . 

But I am not done with these comparisons yet. These same 
census reports show that, at the date referred to, while Massachu- 
setts had proportionately the very smallest number of illiterate 
native white adults of any State in the whole Union, she, at the 
same time, stood head and shoulders above them all in the vast and 
gigantic proportion of her catalogue of criminals. 

Among the New England States, the one that approached 
nearest to Massachusetts in the number of her native white crim- 
inals was the very one that stood next to her in the small propor- 
tion of her illiterate people; and that one was Connecticut. While 
Connecticut had but one native white adult to every 410 who 
could neither read nor write, against one to every 484 in Massa- 
chusetts, she had at the same time one native white criminal to 
every 845, against one to every 649 in Massachusetts. 

Again, taking the whole of the six New England States in 1860, 
they had one native-born white criminal to every 1,084 native 
white inhabitants, while the six States of Maryland, Virginia, Del- 
aware, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, aggregated 
but one native white criminal to every 6,670 native white inhabi- 
tants. A disproportion of six to one in favor of the parental sys- 
tem as against the New England system. Now, I ask what answer 
can be made to these figures ? Will it be said that the Census 
Marshals have perjured themselves and given us false returns? 
Then I demand the proof. Or will it be contended — as was 
once intimated to me — that these Massachusetts criminals, though 
natives of the country, are perhaps the children of foreigners, and 
that they have inherited from their foreign-born parents a propen- 
sity to commit crime? It is true that the census reports are silent 
as to the nativity of the fathers and mothers of these native crim- 
inals, but these reports do reveal a fact which clearly shows that 
there are crimes committed in Massachusetts — crimes, too, of the 
deepest dye, crimes which strike at the heart, yea, at the very exist- 
ence of society — by those who evidently did not owe their criminal 
propensities to the foreign birth of their fathers or mothers. I 
mean the terrrible crime against God and society of murdering 
unborn children in their mother's womb. These same census reports 
for 1860 reveal the startling fact that in the State of Massachu- 
setts there was among foreigners one birth per annum to ever}^ 
fourteen foreign-born inhabitants, while among the natives there 



State vs. Parental Education. 9 

was but one birth to every fifty-seven inhabitants; thus indicating 
that, unless the natives had lost their natural fecundity, they were 
waging a war of extermination against their own children. Dr. 
Allen, of Lowell, Mass., has demonstrated that in certain localities 
in that State, where, two hundred years ago — -just when her anti- 
parental system of education was first inaugurated — ^there were 
upon an average eight children to a family, they have gradually 
declined in numbers until now there are less than three to the fam- 
ily. You may talk of crimes against property, crimes against life, 
crimes against character, but I maintain that the man or woman 
who could with cold, deliberate design and premeditation murder 
his or her unborn babe, is capable of any crime. And akin to this 
is that other crime, so often practised even by married people, of 
thwarting in the very marriage act the great object of marriage. 
It would seem, too, that Boston's dens of prostitution owe their 
overcrowded condition, not so much to the foreign parentage of 
their degraded inmates as to their anti-parental education. Pro- 
fessor Agassiz, after making the most searching investigation into 
the causes of the enormous growth of prostitution in the city of 
Boston, said that, "to his utter astonishment, a large proportion of 
the soiled doves of that city, traced their fall to influences that met 
them in the public schools." So apparent has it become to thinking 
minds that the frightful growth of crime in Massachusetts is owing 
to their system of education that, no longer ago than the 16th day 
of last November, the Boston correspondent of the San Francisco 
Morning Call, writing to that paper, says: "The rapid progress 
of knowledge, peculiar to the educational system of this State, has 
led to the erection of two more State prisons." 

The same correspondent, in a letter published August 5th of 
last year, says, "A large number of public school men have come 
to the conclusion that the public school system of this city is a 
failure." 

And, teU me, how can they or you or I or anybody else come 
to a different conclusion? Perhaps you wUl tell me, as a preacher 
once did in discussing this question, that they teach too much sec- 
tarianism in the public schools of Massachusetts. Now, I wish 
right here to show you the kind of sectarianism they teach in those 
schools. It is the kind which so many of our politicians call non-sect- 
arianism out here in Cahfornia. It is the sectarianism which denies 
both the divinity of Christ and the existence of a heU. If you 



10 State vs. Parental Education. I 

i 

will turn to pages 146-7 of a work published by Lippincott in 
1866, entitled "The Daily Public School," you will find that the 

author, in referring to the public schools of Massachusetts, says: j 

"We once put the question to a director of the public schools of one j 

of our chief cities, whether he supposed a teacher would be justi- J 
fied when rebuking a couple of boys for fighting, if he referred to 

the words of Christ touching our conduct under provocation, as the j 

words of a divine being? He said he was inclined to think it \ 
Avould not be allowed." The author then adds: "Books teaching 

the doctrine of the endless punishment of the finally impenitent ; 

have been rejected times without number as contraband in these ^ 

schools." Now God knows that so far as religious teaching is \ 
concerned these schools ought to be non-sectarian enough to suit 
the devil himself, and the result I have already given in figures. 

But as charity begins at home, perhaps somebody will ask why I j 

have not said more about the workings of the public school system ' 

in our own State of California; or it may be that you think this : 
institution works so charmingly with us, by reason of the vast 

sums of money which have been lavished upon it, the magnificent i 

and palatial buildings which have been erected for its accommoda- ■ 

tion, and the enormous salaries which are paid to some of its teachers, : 

that no just ground of complaint can be found against this system : 
as it exists in this State. 

Be not too fast, my friends ; the Ides of March may have come, < 

but they have not yet passed. From the very foundation of our i 

State the friends of our anti-parental school system have made it -^ 

,, '"fekeir incessant boast that our public schools were modeled after I 

I those of Massachusetts, and so they were, and the results have been, . * ! 

^ if possible, more direful, not to say diabolical, than even in the lat- A ] 

i ter-named State. We have already seen that when the census of '< 

I 1860 was taken, Massachusetts triumphantly carried oif the palm i 

for having proportionally the largest number of native white crim- I 

inals of any State in the whole American Union, while, of all the i 

New England States, Connecticut stood next in letters and next \ 

in crime. But at that time California had already outstripped i 

Connecticut, and stood proudly up next to head, side by side with ! 

her great exemplar, Massachusetts, in the proportion of her native \ 

white criminals; for while Massachusetts had one native white : 

criminal to every 649 native white inhabitants, California had one 

to every 694. But ten years more roll round, the census of 1870 



State vs. Parental Education. 11 

is taken, and behold California stands forth to claim the proud dis- 
tinction previously accorded to Massachusetts, of having more na- 
tive white criminals in proportion to population than any State in 
the Union, for she had one native white criminal to every 512 na- 
tive white inhabitants. And ours seem to be educated criminals 
too, for Lieutenant-Governor Johnson's last annual State Prison 
report, while showing that there were in our Penitentiary 253 con- 
victs onl}^ twenty-one years old or under, tells us that of these 
younger convicts they can " all both read and write." 

Upon our State University both the Federal and State Govern- 
ments have lavished without stint their most bountiful support. 
Most of its officers and professors are gentlemen who stand deserv- 
edly high in the literary and scientific world; they are employed 
by the State, at a very considerable cost, to give the finishing 
touch to the education of the talented and aspiring young men of 
our State after they have passed through the lower grades of a 
public school education; yet, it would seem that by the time many| 
/of our young men pass through the preparatory grades of our | 
\ public schools, they become so impregnated with the spirit of law- f 
less hoodlumism as to be already much better fitted to enter San I 
Quentin than a State University. If anybody doubts this fact, I 
beg leave most respectfully to refer him to the last Grand Jury's 
report of Alameda County, as you will find it published in the 
Oakland Daily Times of September 28th. Keferring to an attack 
recently made upon the private residence of a Mr. Davis by some 
thirty or forty young men, consisting of the Senior students of the 
State University, for the purpose of capturing and subjecting to 
certain disgraceful and barbarous ceremonies a young student who 
had just entered the institution, the Grand Jury, among other 
things, say: — 

"It was in evidence before us that members of the Senior 
Classes of the University, were in the habit of catching Freshmen 
and subjecting them to the grossest indignities, such as tossing 
them in blankets, taking them from bed, stripping them naked, 
shaving half their heads, deluging them with water, painting them 
on their naked bodies, with other amusements of the sort, until, as 
one witness expressed it, 'It was as much as a Freshman's life was 
worth to be caught out at night, and that, in consequence of such 
a state of affairs, many of them who had some self-respect were 
forced to five in San Francisco or Oakland.' " 



12 State vs. Paeental Education. 

Further on the jury say: "It is further in evidence before us 
that personal property is not safe in the vicinity of Berkeley, from 
malicious mischief, and that much damage has been done for which 
there is no redress." 

There, gentlemen, is the picture of your much boasted educa- 
tional system in its very highest department, as drawn by the 
Grand Jury of Alameda County, under the solemn sanction of 
their juridical oaths. There is the photograph, not of young men 
who expect to move in the humblest walks of life, and to earn 
their liviag by their manual labor, but of your educated young 
men, in the very highest sense in which the friends and advocates 
of our public school system recognize that term. They have al- 
ready passed successfully, first through your primary schools, next 
through your grammar schools, then through your high schools. 
They have even passed all the lower grades of a University educa- 
tion, and are now grasping for the highest literary honors in the 
gift of the State. These are the young worthies who are pressing 
forward to take their places at the Bar, on the Bench, in the halls 
of legislation, and generally to take charge of the property, the 
lives, the liberties, and the reputation of our people. 

Ye Gods ! what a hopeful prospect for California. And what a 
glorious thing it would be to have the entire youth of our State 
educated up to this water-ducking, body-stripping, blanket-toss- 
ing, head-shaving, and property-destrojdng degree. All this I say 
without the slightest intention of reflecting in the least degree upon 
the character or capacity of the excellent gentlemen who have the 
immediate charge of our State University. As has been well re- 
marked by Professor Joseph Leconte, of that institution, a Uni- 
versity is intended for "men and not boys." By which he of 
course meant men in mind and manners, as well as men in years. 

rl do not believe these young men have learned their deviltries 
from their University professors. The truth doubtless is that 
many of them graduated in crime long before leaving their dis- 
trict schools, and nothing short of omnipotent power could purify 
their already corrupt and festering hearts. And this is the educa- 
tional system for which California paid last year $2,749,729.46, of 
\ which $2,149,436.70 went to pay teachers. Whenever we propose 
such a reformation of our public school system as wiU make it con- 
form to the laws of nature and the inalienable rights of parents 
and children, we are sure to hear ringing in our ears the everlast- 



State vs. Parental Education. 13 

ing cry of "Sectarianism," by which is only meant "Keligious 
Sectarianism;" but we never hear a word against irreligious 
sectarianisTYi. If we are to believe those who raise this non-secta- 
rian cry, there is only one sect that should have any voice in the 
matter of education, and that is the sect which believes in no God, 
no eternity, no Heaven, and no heU. In other words, the devil's 
own sect. 

We often hear people, and even pohticians, talking flippantly 
about sectarianism, who seem scarcely to know the meaning of 
the word sectarian. Of course all understand that the term sect- 
arian means a member of a sect. But what is a sect ? The En- 
glish word sect, as is weU understood, is derived from the Latin 
word seco, which means to cut off, to separate. Hence a religious 
sect, according to its original signification, meant a class or associ- 
ation of Christians who were cut oflF or separated from the body 
of the Catholic Church. And to condemn the teachings of secta- 
rianism in this sense would simply be to condemn the teaching of 
any except the Catholic religion. Custom, however, has given to 
the word sect a more general and comprehensive meaning than 
this, and according to our best English lexicographers, the word 
sect now means "a body or number of persons, united in tenets." 
That is to say, united in principles or opinions, either political, re- 
ligious, philosophical, educational, or any other kind of opinions. 
Now there are in this country, according to this last definition, 
a great many sects. We have sects difiering from each other 
on questions of religion ; sects differing on questions of politics ; 
sects differing on questions of science and philosophy; and 
sects differing in opinion as to the best mode of educating 
children. Upon this last question alone we have a great variety 
of sects. For example, we have sects that believe in teaching the 
Bible in the schools, and sects that want no Bible taught there. 
We have sects that believe that the teaching of religion and sci- 
ence should go hand in hand ; sects that believe in teaching only 
the human and natural sciences at school, and in limiting religious 
teachings to the home and the church ; and sects who would not 
have religion taught anywhere. But all these different varieties of 
sects, into which the American people are divided on this educa- 
tional question, resolve themselves into two grand divisions, and 
may all be classed under two general heads, namely : the sect or 
body of people who believe that, as a rule, the education of each 



14 State vs. Paeental Education. 

and every child ought to be under parental control; and the op- 
posing sect, who believe that education should be under State con- 
trol. The former sect maintains the doctrine that in the matter 
of education, fathers and mothers, whether they belong to the 
Democratic, Republican, Non-Partisan, or Workingmen's Party; 
whether they be Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or non-religionists, 
without distinction on account of differences on religious, political, 
philosophical, or other questions, are respectively the God-ap- 
pointed guardians, directors, and superintendents of the education 
of their own children ; and that it is the bounden duty of the par- 
ents of each child to direct and control that education according 
to the dictates of their own consciences. 

Members of this sect believe, moreover, that unless they forfeit 
this right by crime, or become incompetent to properly exercise 
it, as by insanity, or lose it by death, it is the grossest tyranny on 
the part of the State to interfere with its free and untrammeled 
exercise, or to compel them to pay for the support of a system of 
education which they cannot in conscience permit their children to 
enjoy. Among those who belong to this sect or party — which 
may properly be termed the Parental Rights Party — are men of 
liberal views, of all classes, creeds and parties; but I have never 
seen the principles of this Parental Rights Party more clearly, 
more forcibly, or more unanswerably expressed, than they are in a 
letter addressed, some time ago, to Governor Alcorn, of Mississippi, 
by Bishop Elder, of Natchez, that brave and fearless champion of 
the cause of humanity, who so nobly periled his life during the late 
prevalence of yellow fever in the ill-fated city of Vicksburg. I 
cannot forbear quoting from that letter the following brief 
passage. The Bishop says : " There are various views about 
religion. Some parents wish their children never to embrace 
any, but to endeavor to be good without religion. Some peo- 
ple wish their children to learn about all the religions, and 
choose for themselves after they grow up. Some wish their 
children taught religion only on Sundays, or between school hours. 
Some, especially the poor white and colored, must make their 
children work between school hours; and Sunday, likewise, has 
many other occupations, spiritual and material. Some parents 
judge that their children have need of frequent reminding of re- 
ligious truths, and most of all, during school hours, when their 
habits of mind are forming. Now all these different classes havp 



State vs. Parental Education. 15 

different views about religion as connected with education. Some 
want little, some want more. Some want it on Sundays, some in 
school hours. What we ask in the name of liberty and justice is, 
that each be free to fol.ow his own views, and that he leave the 
same freedom to his neighbors. 

" That no one of these classes be suffered to dictate to the others 
how their children shall be trained in regard to religion — much less 
be allowed to force their views about religion on their neighbors' 
children, with the very money which those neighbors have paid to 
the State for their education. Let those who want no religion 
have schools to suit them, and those who want more have what suits 
them," 

These are sentiments worthy of a lineal descendant of those noble 
sires of old Maryland, who were the first to plant upon the virgin 
continent of America the sacred banner of civil and religious lib- 
erty. I shall now devote myself to the task of demonstrating, by 
an appeal both to reason and authority, that the parents of every 
child have the natural God-given and inalienable right to direct 
and control its education, and further, that no parent can, without 
a violation of one of nature's highest laws, and without doing a 
gross injustice to his child, allow the State to take from him the 
privilege of exercising this right. 

I shall, then, proceed to prove that our present public school 
system, as by law established, and as it has been proposed to per- 
petuate that system by constitutional enactment, is directly at 
war with this parental right. 

I had not the honor of being present at the organization of our 
Constitutional Convention, but I read in one of our daily newspa- 
pers a detailed account of its opening proceedings, and I there saw 
it stated that every member of this honorable body, before begin- 
ning the all-important work of framing a new Constitution, stood 
up in the presence of the Chief Executive of the State, and with 
uplifted hand, swore a most solemn oath, concluding with the 
words, " So help me God." 

Now I cannot presume that this solemn appeal to that most sa- 
cred name was a mere sham — a simple act of hypocrisy. I must, 
therefore, conclude that every member of our Convention seriously 
believes in the existence and overruling providence of a God — a 
God whose laws, whether relating to the physical, the mental, or 
the moral world, have been enacted with infinite wisdom, and 



16 State vs. Parental Education. 

must be obeyed, or else their violators will be punished with un- 
erring certainty. That, as Sir William Blackstone tells us, "No 
human law is of any validity if contrary to the natural law, and 
that such of them as are valid, derive all their force and all their 
authority mediately or immediately from this great original." 

Now it cannot successfully be denied, that before any State or 
other political organization ever existed, and consequently before 
any human law had ever been enacted, the family society, consist- 
ing of husband and wife, parent and child, was established by the 
Creator, and laws given and plainly written on the heart of each 
member of that society, for its proper government. 

Now what were and what are these laws ? For let it be re- 
membered that whatever they were in the beginning, they are to- 
day, and shall be forever. Man can no more repeal the moral 
law of nature, which prescribes the relative rights and duties of 
parent and child, than he can repeal the physical law of gravita- 
tion, which holds in their appointed spheres all the mighty planets 
of the universe. 

Now amongst the duties which nature imposes on parents is the 
duty of feeding, clothiag, and educating their own children. So 
says the unanimous voice of every author of note, on either law 
or morals, who has ever written on the subject. Bouvier says : 
" The principal obligations which parents owe to their children 
are their maintenance, their protection, and their education." 
Sir William Blackstone says : " The last duty of parents to their 
children is that of giving them an education suitable to their sta- 
tion in life; a duty pointed out by reason, and of far the greatest 
importance of any." 

Chancellor Kent says : " The duties of parents to their children, 
as being their natural guardians, consist in maintaining and edu- 
cating them during the season of infancy and youth." Dr. Way- 
land, in his " Elements of Moral Science," referring to this same 
duty of parents to educate their children, says: "The duties of 
parents are established by God, and God requires us not to violate 
them." But it seems to me that no man or woman, not wholly 
depraved, would pretend to deny that, before and above, and in- 
dependent of all human laws, the father and mother who, under 
God, have called a child into existence, are bound by the very 
first and highest law of their nature not to allow that child 
either to starve to death, freeze to death, or, worse still, to drag 



State vs. Parental Education. 17 

out a miserable, degraded, and worse than dying existence, for 
want of knowing how to live. Then I shall take it for granted 
that we all agree that parents are bound by the natural law to 
educate their own children. But there are very many different 
ways of educating children, and there are a thousand different 
opinions as to which is the right way. And then, again, the 
right way for one, may be the wrong way for another. Dr. Way- 
land says, and he speaks the voice of nature and nature's God, 
when he says : " The duty of parents is generally to educate, or to 
bring up their children in such manner as they believe will be 
most for their future happiness, both temporal and eternal" — not 
in such manner as the Federal or State authorities may believe 
best; not in such manner as a Constitutional Convention, or a 
State Legislature, or a Town Council, or a Board of School Trus- 
tees may direct, but " in such manner as they, the parents of each 
individual child, may believe will be most for its future happiness, 
both temporal and eternal." 

Again, Dr. Wayland tells us that by the natural law "the 
teacher is only the agent, and the parent is the principal ; " and 
again, referring to the duties of the teacher, he says : " If he (the 
teacher) and the parent cannot agree, the connection must be dis- 
solved." But surely, it ought not to have required a Dr. Way- 
land to tell us this. No man or woman, whose moral sense is not 
utterly paralyzed, can fail to read this law, as it stands imprinted 
on every human heart. Now this natural, inalienable right of 
the parent, here asserted by Wayland, to educate his own chil- 
dren in such a manner as he believes will be most for their future 
happiness, necessarily involves the right to select, for purposes of 
such education, a school wherein not only the teachers and the 
books, but also the pupils who are to become the associates of his 
children, are, for purposes of companionship, not seriously objec- 
tionable to him ; for, as Wayland well expresses it, " inasmuch as 
the moral character of the child is greatly influenced by its asso- 
ciations and companions, it is the duty of the parent to watch 
over these with vigilance, and control them with entire independ- 
ence. ... In such matters he is the ultimate and the only 
responsible authority." 

Again, under the head of "the rights of parents," Dr. Wayland 
says, " The right of the parent over his child is, of course, commen- 
surate with his duties. If he be under obligation to educate his 

2 



18 State vs. Parental Education. 

child in such manner as he supposes will be most conducive to the 
child's happiness and the weKare of society, he has of necessity the 
right to control the child in everything necessary to the fulMment 
of this obligation." 

Then who will dare deny that the custody, care, and education 
of children is a personal trust, reposed by the Creator of every 
human child in its own father and mother ? 

In order to qualify fathers and mothers in a peculiar manner 
for the faithful discharge of this high trust, they are endowed 
by their Maker with a special and particular affection for their 
own children, which they do not and cannot feel for the children 
of another, and which another does not and cannot feel for their 
children. This affection we call parental love. It is due to each 
child from its own father and mother, and it is not due from any- 
body else. It is a debt which nobody else can fully pay. It is 
only the father and mother who, by daily and nightly contact 
with the child, can know whether or not the teacher is discharg- 
ing his duty. It is only they that have an opportunity of 
knowing whether the child is learning virtue or vice at school. 
It is only they that can discern in his daily deportment either an 
increasing respect for superiors, or a growing contempt for au- 
thority. Theirs is the peculiar privilege of witnessing the smile 
of innocence that sparkles in the eye and dimples the cheek, or 
else the sinister frown and bitter, scornful sneer which overcloud 
and distort the countenance. It is theirs to listen to that sweet, 
merry, ringing laugh; to look down into those bright, clear, beau- 
tiful, confiding, truth-telling orbs, that bespeak a heart and soul 
free from guile; or else to hear the sullen murmur of youthful 
discontent; the low, vile, lewd, and profane language of the 
blackguard, and to note the hypocritical, deceitful look; the sly, 
stealthy glance, and. the lecherous, beastly glare of the eye, which 
tell of a heart already tainted with dishonesty, or rotten with im- 
purity. 

Not only has the Creator implanted in the hearts of fathers and 
mothers of children this peculiar afiection called parental love, and 
furnished them with peculiar opportunities of observing the good 
or bad results of the education they are receiving; but in order 
the better to qualify them for the faithful discharge of their noble 
trust, he has, moreover, in a very special manner, so interwoven 
the happiness of the child with that of the parent, that it is impossi- 



State vs. Parental Education. 19 

ble for the latter to be happy while the former is miserable. It is 
not possible for the child to suffer dishonor without sending a 
deadly sting into the heart of the parent. There is no period or 
condition of life when the happiness of the parent does not largely 
depend upon the manner of the child's education. 

But especially is this proposition true when considered with 
reference to those seasons of poverty, of sickness, or of extreme 
old age, when more than at any other time of life, man feels the 
necessity of human sympathy and human succor. If your chil- 
dren have been properly educated, it is then that they will rally 
to your support. If assailed by poverty, they will stand as faith- 
ful sentinels at your door, to see that want do not enter there. In 
the hour of your sickness, theirs are the eyes that wiU watch 
throughout the livelong night without growing weary; and theirs 
the hands that will smooth the pillow where rests the aching head, 
and lift to the parched lips the soothing cup of cold water; and 
when death shall have forever closed your earthly career, 
upon your honored grave will faU in mute eloquence the grateful 
tears of their undying filial love ; and finally, in the lives of unnum- 
bered generations yet unborn, wiU bloom forth and fructify the seeds 
of truth, honor, justice, and charity, which you by means of a good 
education shall have sown in the minds and hearts of your chil- 
dren. But, on the other hand, if while your children are young? 
and helpless you needlessly turn them over to the town to be ed- \ 
u ucated, ten chances to one, when you grow old and poor and help- 1 
'^ less, they will requite this neglect by turning you over to the I 
town to be supported while living, and by the town, to be buried I 
in a pauper's grave when dead. 

To show you that these views are not peculiar to the thinking 
minds of any creed or party, but that they are beginning to excite, 
to alarm, and arouse to action some of the best and clearest intel- 
lects in the country, allow me to read extracts from a few com- 
munications addressed to myseK by gentlemen well known in 
California, in acknowledging the receipt of a little book recently 
published by me on the school question. 

An intelligent Protestant gentleman, Mr, A. Adams, writing 
from Los Angeles County last March, the 8d, says: "I am struck 
with the similarity of our views on the school question, and bid 
you God-speed in propagating your views as contained in the pub- 



20 State vs. Parental Education. 

lication before me. I see that you, a Catholic, and I, a Protestant 
are united here." 

Dr. Thomas Dawson of the same county, a gentleman of a 
high order of intelligence, but professing no form of religion, on 
May 26th wrote: "On speaking of this subject of our public schools, 
I find that there are many persons in this section who are in har- 
mony with you in sentiment on this subject, and when they shall 
liave had access to your array of facts and arguments will certainly 
become aroused to a proper sense of the importance of the subject; 
for I honestly believe that your array of facts and reasoning are 
simply unanswerable." 

Dr. John Le Conte, the very able, learned, and worthy Presi- 
dent of your State University, in a letter addressed to myself on 
the 21st of last March, touching the subject chiefly discussed in the 
book referred to, while he does not entkely agree with me as to the 
cause, bitterly laments the fact of the decline of parental authority 
as follows. He says: "There can be no doubt that the gradual 
impairment and loss of parental authority and influence is one 
of the most serious and m^omentous evils which heset the American 
civilization. It undermines the very foundations of the family 
— the essential unit of society." 

Dr. Joseph Le Conte, also a leading Professor of the California 
State University, and who is regarded by many as one of the 
clearest and deepest thinkers in America, while not prepared at pres- 
ent to go as far as myself in his opposition to the existing public 
school system, nevertheless, in a letter dated April 8th, 1878, among 
other good things, says : " I fully concur with you in your view that 
any education which weakens the family tie, strikes at the very 
foundation of society, and no amount of good in other directions 
can atone for this greatest of all evils. I fully concur with you 
also in your opposition to compulsory State education. This cer- 
tainly strikes at the integrity of the family, for it makes children 
the wards of the State. I fully believe, also, that private schools, 
each parent choosing his own, furnish a better education, all things 
considered, than any public school system." 

Several months ago I sent the book referred to, embodying 
the same sentiments uttered here to-night, to more than 100 editors 
of papers and periodicals published on this coast, and in each case 
enclosed a letter to the editor requesting, if any error sliould be 
discovered either in my facts or conclusions, that I might be set 



State vs. Parental Education. 21 

right. Did time permit, I could read to you many handsome endorse- 
ments both from the daily and weekly journals of this State. 
Others found fault with the book. But I believe that not one 
has attempted to deny the facts or figures given, or to refute 
by anything which could be dignified by the name of argument 
the conclusions drawn therefrom. 

Among the journals denying the paramount right of parents 
to control the education of their own children, as asserted in that 
book, I regret to have to number the San Francisco Monitor, the 
only Catholic newspaper in this State. But in doing so, I feel 
warranted in saying, that as far as I have been able to learn, that 
paper expressed the views of no other Catholic journal, and of no 
Catholic clergyman, either Priest, Bishop, or Archbishop, except the 
learned divine who edits that paper. The people are already begin- 
ning to understand the fearful wrong both to themselves and their 
children, to which they have too long submitted, in surrendering 
to the State both their money and their little ones ; and when they 
do fully awake to a realizing sense of this deep wrong, fearful will 
be the reckoning required of its authors, its aiders and abettors. 

Your humble servant has been sometimes charged with being"^ 
a bigoted Roman Catholic, and with seeking to establish the pub- • 
lie school system on a so.'arian basis. Now, that you may know 
how far my Catholic sectarianism carries me on this school ques- 
tion, allow me to assure you that while I am an humble member 
of the Roman Catholic Church, and recognize to its fullest extent 
the teaching authority of that Church in religious matters, and ; 
with a very few isolated exceptions have the highest respect for \ 
the learning, ability, and piety of its clergy, yet if every Priest ] 
and Bishop in California and in America, backed by the Holy I 
Father, the Pope of Rome himself, should do so improbable and 
unwarranted a thing as to command me to send my child to be 
educated by a particular teacher, whom I, as the father of the 
child, should conscientiously believe an unsuitable person to be 
entrusted with that important work, it would not only be my right, 
but my bounden duty, both as a Roman Catholic and a parent, • 
to disobey the command; and why? Because this is a matter in 
which the law of nature throws upon me the responsibility of act- 
ing according to my own best judgment based upon all the lights 
within Ltiy reach. Leaving all other considerations aside, is it at all 
probable that even all these Priests, Bishops, and Pope, with all 



22 State vs. Parental Education. 

their learning and piety, would know as much of the teacher's real 
character as I, the father, who daily read that character in the lan- 
guage and conduct of my own child? 

And suppose that from that language and conduct, or from 
any other source of information, I, the parent should come to the 
conclusion that the teacher of my young son or daughter is an un- 
principled libertine, whose detestable conduct or vile maxims would 
in a single day, or perhaps in a single moment, corrupt and ruin my 
child — shall it be said that I must stiU wait until my priest or Bishop, 
or any other man, whether he be churchman or statesman, shall 
grant me permission to snatch my child from the jaws of destruc- 
tion? 

No ! no ! This is a power, an authority over my chUd, which, 
whilst living, I can neither entrust to nor divide with any other 
man. And the very same right which I claim for myself, I claim 
for every other parent, be he Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or non-re- 
ligionist; and this is the length, the breadth, the height, the depth 
and the thickness of my Roman Catholic sectarianism on the school 
question : and when I speak thus I believe I speak the sentiments 
of every well instructed Roman Catholic in the world, except it 
be a certain nondescript kind usually styling themselves Liberal 
Catholics, and whom in California you may generally know by the 
fact that whenever in their presence the charge of religious bigotry 
is preferred against your humble servant in connection with this 
school question, they always stand ready to shout Amen! to the 
slander. 

This is a class of Catholics, every one of whom, while agreeing 
with me that it would be wrong to surrender his parental authority 
to any bishop or priest, no matter how learned and holy he might 
be, would not at the same time hesitate to divide that authority 
with every hoodlum, and loafer, and bummer, and drunkard ; with 
every thief, rake, and robbei-, provided only they have votes with 
which to lift his miserable carcass into some petty office, where, 
with the prefix of honorable to his name, he will seek to cover his 
worse than Judas-like treason. Treason to his children, treason to 
his country, and treason to his God. 

It has not unfrequently been said to me, "Were it not for your 
radical and uncompromising notions on the school question, you 
could have this office, and that office, and the other office." I now 
give due notice, both to my friends and my foes, that I recognize 



State vs. Parental Education. 23 

no more honorable office on earth, than the office of vindicating 
down-trodden truth, and I may add that I neither ask nor desire 
any higher office than the office of stripping and exposing in all 
their horrid and naked deformity, and lashing with the relentless 
scourge of truth, these trimming, time-serving, pot-house politi- 
cians, whether of high or low degree, called liberal Catholics, who 
would not only barter their own birthright, but that of their chil- 
dren, and their children's children to the end of time for a dirty mess 
of political pottage. This is the class of Catholics of whom I regret to 
say you now have some choice specimens in the city of Sacramento 
and about this your State Capitol. Such are the Catholics, who, 
in the daylight, would greet you with faces wreathed in smiles, 
and under cover of the darkness would stab you in the back. 
Such is the liberality of these liberal Catholics, that when every 
other means had utterly failed of depriving your humble servant 
of a hearing on this school question before your Honorable Com- 
mittee, or the other members of your Honorable Body, they finally 
resorted to the low trickery of locking the door of the Senate 
Chamber, hiding the key, and then declaring it stolen. 

But thanks to the courtesy, the honor, the manhood and the 
love of fair dealing which characterize gentlemen everywhere — 
except these liberal Catholics — I have been kindly accorded the 
use of this magnificent hall, which answers a better purpose. 

I will also add, in passing, that in the course of a somewhat 
eventful life, I have never been called upon to confront as vile and 
contemptible a trick as that resorted to within the walls of* this 
Capitol to-night for the purpose of thwarting my right of _|rg.e. 
speech on this school question. Even during the bitterest and 
bloodiest days of the late war I travelled from one end of this 
State to the other, held meetings and made pubhc speeches oppos- 
ing both the war and the present publip school system. But the I 
gentlemen opposed to me in sentiment, while they believed me 
wrong in my way of thinking, generously accorded to me the 
right to speak as I thought. Those were bold, generous and mag- 
nanimous foes, and never, from the beginning to the end of that 
terrible struggle, did I have a meeting broken up or a hall in which 
I had made an appointment to speak, closed against me. Perhaps 
it may be asked why it is that I am so much more bitter in my de- 
nunciation of my Catholic than of my non-Catholic adversaries on 
this school question? Now I shall answer this question by asking 



24 State vs. Parental Education. 

another. Why is it that Titus Gates that consummate hypocrite 
and apostate Catholic of detested memory, whose false accusations 
caused the execution of so many of England's best men, has by 
the cpmmon consent of all mankind been branded with a degree of 
infamy such as nobody ever thought of visiting upon the judges 
and juries who tried and convicted those innocent men. It is be- 
cause, the fact of his having been a professed Cathohc, and in the 
confidence of Catholics, gave to his false testimony a weight which 
it would not otherwise have had; and while he well knew that he 
lied when he charged his ill-fated victims with plotting for the 
overthrow of the Government, those judges and juries neither knew 
nor had his opportunities for knowing the truth. So in the pres- 
ent case. These so-called liberal Catholics, coming from the same 
religious household as myself, when they join in the hue and cry 
of religious and sectarian bigotry, give a point and power — which 
otherwise it would not have — to the false charge so often preferred 
against me, of seeking a division of the public school fund on a 
purely sectarian basis, for the especial benefit of Catholics, instead 
of — as the fact is — on a parental basis, without any kind of dis- 
tinction or discrimination, either for or against religionists or non- 
religionists, of any creed, sect, party or class whatever. 

I have now given you the doctrine of that educational sect 
comprising intelligent and truly liberal-minded men of all creeds, 
and parties who are willing to allow and to guarantee to every 
man, regardless alike of political and religious differences of opin- 
ion, the right to worship God and to educate his children according 
to the dictates of his own conscience. This is the sectarianism 
which rests squarely and firmly on the great eternal, immutable, 
natural moral law; and if you gentlemen would repeal that law, 
you should first try the strength of your legislative powers by a 
repeal of the natural physical laws which set in motion the winds 
and the waves, and prescribe the speed and course of the heav- 
enly bodies; or, at least, by a repeal of that other natural law 
which makes food necessary to sustain human life. I do not doubt 
man's power to disregard and violate even this natural physical 
law; but in doing so, he will only bring death to that life which 
food was made to sustain. Neither do I doubt man's ability to 
disregard and violate the natural moral law, which prescribes the 
lelative duties of parent and child in the matter of education; 



State vs. Parental Education. 25 

but I do deny his ability to do so and escape the terrible penalties 
due to such violation. 

Then on the other hand we have on this educational question 
another sect, whose views and principles I now propose to consider. 
It is what may be styled the anti-parental, public school sect; a 
sect composed of those who maintain the doctrine that it is not 
the right of the -parent but of the State to determine how, by 
whom, and in what company the child shall be educated. 

In 1864, our then California State Superintendent of Public 
Instruction boastfully and triumphantly proclaimed the doctrine 
as established by numerous judicial decisions which he quoted "that 
the vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate 
to teachers is entirely erroneous." "That parents have no 
remedy as against the teachers" and that "the child should he taught 
to consider his instructor in many respects superior to the parent 
in point of authority!' 

Quoting from a New York decision in Spear vs. Cummings, 
23 Pick, 824, the Superintendent says: "In private schools the 
case is somewhat different" from what it is in the public schools, 
" for the parents there, in legal effect, are the employers of the 
teacher, and consequently his masters; but in the common and 
pubhc schools they are neither his employers nor his masters, and 
it is entirely out of place for them to attempt to give him orders; 
for there is no privity of contract between the parents of pupils to 
be sent to school and the schoolmaster. The latter is employed and 
paid by the town, and to them only is he responsible on his con- 
duct" 

For the correctness of these quotations I refer to Superintend- 
ent Swett's biennial report for 1864, pp. 164-5. Again. If you 
will turn to the June number of the California Teacher for 18G7, 
the official organ of our State Superintendent, you will find the 
monstrous doctrine of this anti-parental sect officially announ- 
ced in the following language, namely: "We have a course of 
study established by law, by means of which teachers are ena- 
bled to pursue an intelligent system of instruction in spite of the 
prejudices of parents who are too ignorant to comprehend the pur- 
poses of a school." But, as the fullest and fairest exposition of the 
narrow-minded, intolerant, contracted proscriptive doctrine of this 
anti-parental public school sect, I shall call your attention to Sec- 
tion of 1 an Act, entitled "An Act to enforce the educational rights 



26 State vs. Paeental Education. 

of children," passed by the Legislature of this State, and approved 
March 28, 1874, which provides as follows: "Every parent, guar- 
dian, or other person in the State of California, having control or 
charge of any chUd or children, between the ages of eight and 
fourteen years, shall be required to send any such chUd or children 
to a public school, for a period of at least two-thirds of the time 
during which a public school shall be taught in each city, or city 
and county, or school district, in each school year, commencing on 
the 1st day of July, in the year of our Lord 1874 ; at least twelve 
weeks of which shall be consecutive, unless such child or children 
are excused from such attendance by the Board of Education of 
the city, or city and county, or the Trustees of the school district 
in which such parents, guardians, or other persons reside, wpon its 
being shown to their satisfaction that his or her bodily or mental 
condition has been such as to prevent attendance at school, or applica- 
tion to study for the period required, or that the parents or guardians 
are extremely poor or sick, or that such child or children are taught 
in a private school or at home, in such branches as are usually 
taught in the primary schools of this State, or have already ac- 
quired a good knowledge of such branches; provided, in case a 
public school shall not be taught for three months during the year, 
within one mile by the nearest travelled road of the residence of 
any person within the school district, he shall not be liable to the 
provision of this Act. 

Section three of the same statute makes its violation a penal 
offense, and visits parents and guardians with a penalty of from 
$20 to $50 for each violation. So that under our present public 
school system the parent is not only required to allow this anti- 
parental educational sect to prescribe for his children their course 
of studies, select for them their books, their teachers, and the 
companions with whom they must associate, but he is required, 
however much it may do violence to his judgment and his con- 
science, to send his children to just such schools as this sect may 
provide, unless it should please his masters — the Board of School 
Directors — to allow him, after forfeiting all of his interest in the 
public school funds, to educate his children elsewhere, at his own 
expense. 

Thus it is easy to be seen, that so far as legislative enactments 
can effect that monstrous result, the education, the honor, the 
virtue of every child in this State is to-day completely at the 



State vs. Parental Education. 27 

mercy of the School Directors of the city, town, or district where 
it happens to reside, for, be it remarked, that under this statute^ 
should the Board of School Directors appoint as a teacher for 
your young, innocent daughter, the vilest libertine that pollutes 
the earth, you are required to send that daughter to his school 
and are not allowed to withdraw her therefrom, even for the pur- 
pose of sending her, at your own expense, to the best private 
school in the State, unless you first go and obtain permission of 
your said masters, composing the very Board who have perpe- 
trated so foul an outrage upon you and your child. And you will 
observe that even this Board of Directors are not allowed by this 
statute to consent in any case to the absence of a child from the 
public school, except upon its being made to appear to their satis- 
faction, either that the parents are extremely poor or sick, or 
that the bodily or mental condition of the child is such as to pre- 
vent its attendance, or that the child is being taught at home or 
elsewhere the same branches usually taught in the public pri- 
mary schools. These are the only reasons for which this stat- 
ute will even permit the School Directors to allow the withdrawal 
of a child from the public schools. It will do no good to tell the 
Board that you believe in your heart the school teacher is a base, 
bad man, or a vile, lewd, and abandoned woman. Nor will it be 
of any avail to assert, and'^o prove the fact, that a considerable 
number of the pupils of the school are already perfected in all 
the arts of crime, and that your child cannot associate with such 
companions without corrupting its morals. These are not recog- 
nized under the statute as legal excuses for absence, so that, come 
weal or woe, you must either send your child to the school, or 
else stand branded as a criminal before the law, and run the risk 
of being mulct in damages or sent to jail, or both, for refusing to 
thrust your child, as you believe, into the very jaws of destruc- 
tion. 

To show the singular dilemma in which this compulsory school 
law may sometimes place a parent, I need only refer to another 
portion of the same Grand Jury's report of Alameda County al- 
ready mentioned, wherein the jury charge that two out of three 
of the late School Directors of Temescal District— and that is my 
own school district — were guilty of malfeasance in office — the 
one by taking from the Board, of which he was a member, an ap- 
pointment as music teacher, and the other, by procuring from the 



28 State vs. Parental Education. 

same Board a building contract. The same Grand Jury further 
charge one of the present members of the same Board with the 
embezzlement of money in a matter outside of his duties of School 
Director. And these are the individuals whom the school law 
would make the guardians of my children with paramount au- 
thority, in defiance of the will of their own father and mother, to 
say who shall be their teachers, their companions, and what they 
shall study at school. Let it not be said that this statute is sel- 
dom or never put in force, and that it stands as a dead letter on 
the statute book. For if that be so, then what, let me ask, must 
be the efiect of this lawless example on the rising generation, set 
before them by those whose authority the law makes superior to 
that of their own fathers and mothers in the matter of their edu- 
cation ? The statute makes it the duty of the school directors to 
see to the enforcement of this compulsory school law ; and these 
directors take a solemn oath to faithfully discharge the duties of 
their trust ; and are we to be told that both the law and the offi- 
cial oaths of our school officers are mere dead letters ? If this in- 
famous statute can be dignified with the name of a law, then, I 
ask, are not our school directors guilty of official perjury when- 
ever they willfully and knowingly neglect its enforcement ? And 
how can we hope that the pupil will respect his oath or reverence 
the law when trained up under the immediate guardianship of 
men who have no regard for either ? Even the repeal of this 
compulsory statute would be of little avail, for the reason that 
the parent would still have to submit to be robbed either of all 
interest in the school fund, or else of his sacred right to direct and 
control his children's education, under these anti-parental school 
laws now in force. 

The dignity, the honor, and the reverence once recognized as 
due to the parental office have been utterly abolished. The fam- 
ily government, so far as legislation can make it so, is now to be 
numbered amongst the institutions of the past. The father of 
the child who, as we have seen, cannot rightfully divide his au- 
thority tp select the school for his children, even with the best 
man in the world, is now required by statute to split up and sub- 
divide that authority into as many fractional parts as there are 
voters in his district, and to parcel it out equally amongst them 
all, the good and the bad, the drunk and the sober, the honest 
man and the thief, tke virtuous and the vicious, and allow them 



State vs. Parental Education. 29 

to decide, by a political election, who shall take his (the father's) 
place in selecting teachers for his children. Thus the vile wretch 
whom he would not permit to darken his door, and whose 
friendly salutation on the street he would be tempted to resent 
as an insult, must, nevertheless, be allowed to share equally with 
himself the guardianship of his children. Not only that, but his'^A 
little ones, however young and innocent and pure, must be sent | 
to associate on equal and familiar terms with the children of the v 
vilest, most besotted and degraded pimps and prostitutes of the 
town; with children whose eyes from their tenderest infancy are - 
inured to scenes of beastly debauchery, and whose ears — aye, and 
tongues too, — have grown familiar with lewd, profane, and bias-, 
phemous language. Children whom the virtuous parent would 
no more permit under the home roof to associate with his own, i 
than if they were so many scorpions or rattlesnakes. Evil com- ^ 
munications corrupt good manners. And who does not know 
that one bad child is enough to endanger the morals of a whole 
school ? 

I know it is sometimes argued that every legal voter is as much 
entitled and as competent to participate in determining by his 
vote who shall be the teacher of his neighbor's child, and how 
that child shall be taught, as he is to participate in deciding how 
the State shall be governed and who shall be its Governor. 
Those who argue thus say that every voter has an interest in the 
proper education of every child in the community, and therefore 
every voter should be allowed a voice in directing and controlling 
that education. I answer, it is true that every voter has an in- 
direct interest in the proper education of every child in the com- 
munity, but it is only the father and mother of the child who 
have a direct and vital interest in that subject. With them it is 1 
more than a question of life and death, as to whether their own \ 
child shall become a debauched, degraded outcast, to be despised 
by men for all time, and accursed by God for all eternity. fWhile^' 
I admit that every voter has an indirect interest in the proper 
education of his neighbor's children, I deny that it is every indi- 
rect interest that gives to the interested party the right to vote. 
To illustrate: Every citizen of the State of California is indi- 
rectly interested in seeing that Sacramento has good and capable 
municipal officers. But does that prove that every citizen of this 
State has a right to vote at the election for Mayor of Sacramento 



30 State vs. Parental Education. 

City ? Every subject of Great Britian — yes, and of China too — ■ 
has an indirect interest in the election of the President, Senators, 
and Congressmen of the United States. And this, not only by 
reason of the vast commercial relations existing between those 
countries and ours, but because the question of peace or war may^ 
and sometimes does, turn upon an election of those officers. But 
will it therefore be claimed that all the inhabitants of Great 
Britain and of the Chinese Empire have a right to participate in 
our elections ? If that is to be the doctrine, there can be but 
little doubt but that California's notorious Bee will be our next 
President. 

Take another illustration : Every voter and tax-payer is indi- 
rectly interested in having our young men and maids properly 
and congenially wedded, whereby much less of the time of our 
Courts would be occupied in trying divorce suits, and the peace 
of neighborhoods would be less frequently disturbed by family 
brawls. Must we then establish a Board of Matrimonial Direc- 
tors, to be elected by the people, whose duty it shall be to select 
i'or every young man such wife as suits the tastes of the Board, 
without reference to the wishes of the parties to be wedded? 
Think you that this would prevent family quarrels, or put a stop 
to suits for divorce ? 

I am persuaded that no sane man will, upon reflection, deny 
that, in all matters appertaining to the affairs of a government — 
whether such government be great or small; whether it be a na 
tional, a State, or a county government; whether it be the gov- 
ernment of a city, or a corporation, or a family — other things be- 
ing equal, it belongs not to those who are indirectly, but to those 
who are directly interested in the action and results of the gov- 
ernment, to direct and wield the powers of such government. 

Now, who in all the wide world can be the one-ten-thousandth 
part so directly and vitally interested in the proper exercise of 
that particular function of the family government which appertains 
to the education of the child as are its own father and mother ? 

Who will undertake to estimate in dollars and cents the value 
of well-trained and properly educated children to their own par- 
ents. Show me the father and mother of a good, dutiful, and 
properly educated child who would be wUling to exchange that 
child for any or all the other children in the world, and I will 
show you a pair of monsters in human form- 



State vs. Parental Education. 81 

If there is any government in the world that has the inherent 
right to regulate its own domestic affairs in its own way, it is the 
family government. This is the oldest government on the face of the 
earth. It is the source, the fountain head, whence all human gov- 
ernments take their rise. God himself is its immediate author. 
The father of a family is the only earthly king who rules directly 
by Divine right. His authority over his own children, and his ex- 
clusive right to train and educate them in his own way, dates 
back to the very morning when the firstborn child of Adam and 
Eve lay a helpless infant in the arms of its mother; and this au- 
thority was long afterward reaffirmed and ratified by the Al- 
mighty from the mountain's top, where, with a tongue of light- 
ning and a voice of thunder, he gave the command, " Honor thy 
father and thy mother." Every famiily is a little government, a 
God-ordained government, with its powers and its jurisdiction 
distinctly marked out and recorded on the tablet of the human 
heart; and each of these little governments stands in the relation 
of a foreign power toward every other family government. 
There is surrounding each family government, however poor and 
humble such family may be, a " charmed circle," within which the 
mightiest monarch on earth should not dare, uninvited, to set his 
foot or intrude his unwelcome presence. And this is the educa- 
tional circle ; this is that sacred circle which encompasses the ten- 
der, plastic, untaught mind and heart during the earlier years of 
childhood, when the character of the future man or woman is in 
its embryo state, and liable to be made or marred by the very 
slightest touch, and to be swayed for good or evil by the most im- 
perceptible influences. _^'' 

It will not do to say that the State contributes its money to-J \ 
ward the education of the young, and therefore the State may ■; \ 
step within the family circle, and cutting asunder the sacred bonds \ \ 
of love, harmony, and reciprocal confidence between parent and ) \ 
child, transfer the control of the child's education to the hands off I 
strangers. As well might you tell me that should the State in-| ( 
vest its money in the raising of sheep, it ought, therefore, to snatch \ i 
the young sucking lambs from the well-filled teats of their own I \ 
mothers, and turn them over to a herd of barren ewes or crusty,! | 
udderless old wethers to be suckled. „SZzJ 

If the State would cover its broad pastures with fat and healthy 
herds, let it not thwart, but aid, the parent sheep in following the 



32 State vs. Parental Education. 

laws prescribed by nature for the propagation, protection, and 
feeding of their young. So, likewise, if the State government 
would fill this land with free, intelligent^ well-educated, upright, 
law-abiding men and women, let it not thwart fathers and mothers 
in their honest endeavors to preserve intact their parental au- 
thority, and to maintain the honor, dignity, and harmony of the 
family government, by educating their own children according to 
the dictates of their own best judgments and consciences. 

It appears to me that the surrender to the State by parents of 
the right to control the education of their own children, is the 
most wonderful as well as the most astounding enigma to be found 
in the history of the human race. I believe I have never yet 
found a sane man who, if asked the question whether or not he 
would be willing to let the good or bad training of his horse or his 
dog depend upon the uncertain result of a political election, would 
not promptly and emphatically say no ! And yet will that same 
individual, with the most amazing inconsistency, imperil the edu- 
cation of his child — whose good training he should prize more 
than that of all the horses an dogs in the universe, involving as it 
does, not only the temporal and eternal happiness of the child itself, 
but also the honor and social standing of his entire family, as well 
as his own peace of mind for the rest of his days — by making it 
depend upon that same fickle and uncertain event upon which he 
would not risk the usefulness or the good reputation of his dumb 
brute ! Was there ever — I ask in all candor — was there ever in- 
consistency like to this ? 

As an objection against allowing parents — each for himself — to 
control the education of his own children, it is sometimes urged 
that the great mass of parents, by reason of their indifference and 
incapacity, are unfit to discharge so important a trust. But I 
would ask every honest and intelligent parent who argues thus, 
upon what principle of reason or sound morality can you allow these 
indifferent and incompetent parents to participate equally with 
yourself in deciding by their votes who shall control the education 
of your children, when you are not willing to trust them to man- 
age and control the education of their own ? 

It is also but too true that parents as a rule are most alarmingly 
indifferent to the manner of their children's education, as is abund- 
antly proved by the single fact of their having surrendered to the 
State all control over the subject. But I hold that this indifier- 



State vs. Parental Education. 33 

ence on the part of parents is the necessary and natural outgrowth 
of our anti-parental educational public school system itself. 

One of the favorite maxims of those who are forever lauding 
this system, is that the State owes every child an education. And 
what is more natural than that parents who from their tenderest 
infancy have had this false maxim dinned into their years, and 
whose own fathers and mothers have acted upon this maxim by 
leaving their education to the State, to be shaped according tu 
the accidents of political elections, should have arrived at the con- 
clusion that it is no concern of theirs, but the business of the 
State to look after their children's education. 

Let the State government assume to itself the business of feed- 
ing and clothing all the children in the State at its own expense, 
and let it dress and feed all these children alike, in defiance of the 
differing tastes, judgments, and wishes of parents, and I am per- 
suaded that in the course of a few generations there would be wit- 
nessed an alarming growth of parental indifi*erence to the whole 
subject, both of the food and clothing of the children, while at the 
same time there would be a corresponding increase of interest 
manifested by a swarm of wholesale dealers, in their greedy efforts 
to get swindling contracts to furnish the government the needed 
supplies. 

Lippincott, in his Gazetteer of the world, tells us that in Egjrpt 
it has been the custom for hundreds of years to hatch chickens by 
artificial heat and raise them by hand ; and he asserts it as a re- 
markable fact that chickens thus hatched and raised without a 
mother's care, are wholly destitute of the instincts which relate to 
the care of young, And so it is in a large degree with children 
who have been brought up under this abnormal system of educa- 
tion. When they themselves become parents, they know nothing 
of the duties of parents, except as they have been meagerly taught 
them in a school of parental neglect. «-^ 

One of the most direful effects of taking from the parents and « 



transferring to the general public the power to control the child's 
education, is the weakening, not to say the entire destruction, of 
that filial love, respect, honor, and obedience which the child owes 
to its father and mother, and along with that, the sapping of the 
very foundations of the family government ; and, finally, the ruin 
of society itself. 

The reason of this is obvious. Unless the parent abandons all 



34 State vs. Parental Education. 

idea of his individual manhood; unless he resolves, right or wrong, 
to think just as those people happen to think who appoint the 
schoolmaster and select the school books ; unless he is willing to 
make himself a perfect nobody, and like an unfledged bird, with 
open mouth and closed eyes, accept and gulp down any and 
every ridiculous falsehood or base perversion of truth which finds 
expression in the school-room ; there must of necessity arise con- 
tradictions and conflicts between home teaching and public school 
teaching. At home parents very naturally, both by word and ex- 
ample, endeavor to impart to their children their own ideas upon 
the important subjects of politics, of religion, of history, and the 
like, while the business of the public schoolmaster is to teach those 
same children to believe that their home-training on these same 
subjects is false, whenever that home-training does not accord with 
the views and sentiments of the particular party, faction or clique 
to which the teacher owes his appointment. Perhaps, though, it 
may be thought there is no partisanism in our public school 
books, that they are simply and purely books of science — ^nothing 
more, nothing less. Why, do you not know that partisanism has 
poisoned and is daily poisoning more and more the very fountain 
head of your entire educational system ? Why, even Webster's 
Dictionary, the standard for orthography and definitions in all of 
our public schools, a book once accepted by all parties as generally 
fair and authentic in its definitions of political terms, has, in its latest 
editions, been so perverted, sometimes by suppressing the old defi- 
nitions, and sometimes by interpolating new ones, that no Ameri- 
can citizen not thoroughly indoctrinated in the principles of a con- 
solidated government, and who is not prepared to abandon the 
idea of a Federal Union of Sovereign States, such as our fathers 
made, could ever think of accepting this modernized and falsified 
Webster as authority in defining political terms. 

A few examples will suffice for illustration. We will begin 
with the word constitution. The original Webster's Dictionary, 
as it existed up to the time of the late civil war, in defining the 
word constitution, said: "In free States the constitution is para- 
mount to the statutes or laws enacted by the Legislature, limiting 
and controlling its power; and in the United States the Legisla- 
ture is created, and its powers designated by the Constitution." 

But as if afraid that this definition might reflect harshly upon 
some of our demagogues and unprincipled Congressional politicians 



State vs. Parental Education' 35 

who have never allowed the Federal Constitution to stand in the 
way of their gigantic schemes of fraud and plunder, Dr. Porter, in 
his revised edition of Webster, suppresses every word of the above 
definition, and in its stead defines the word Constitution among 
other things to mean, " The principle or fundamental laws which 
govern a State or other organized body of men, and are embodied 
in written documents, or im,plied in the institutions or usages of the 
country or society." So that if the father teaches the boy at home, 
as Webster's Dictionary once taught, that in free States the Consti- 
tution is paramount to the statutes or laws enacted by the Legisla- 
ture, and that in the United States the Legislature is created and its 
powers designated by the Cunstitution," it then becomes the duty 
of the public school teacher to tell the lad, the next day, that his 
father does not know what he is talking about, and to call his at- 
tention to the latest edition of Webster, from which the old gen- 
tleman's antiquated definition of the word "Constitution" has 
been totally expunged, and from which it appears that in these 
modern times mere usages take the force of Constitutional law. 
Should the father tell his son at home that the word " Union," in 
its true political sense, as applied to these United States, means a 
anion of distract sovereign States, but not a consolidated govern- 
ment, it would again become the duty of the teacher to open Dr. 
Porter's latest edition of Webster and show him that the word 
" Union" nneans a consolidated body, as the United States of 
America are often called the Union." 

Again, let the father at home teach his son — just as he learned 
it from Webster long years ago — that the word " Federal " means 
" consisting in a compact between parties, particularly and chiefly 
between States and nations formed on alliance by contract or 
mutual agreement, as a Federal Government, such as that of the 
United States," and forthwith the public school teacher, armed 
with a modern forged and mutilated Webster, will tell him that 
there is no such definition as that, of the word " Federal " to be 
found in the book, but that the word " Federal," as now appears 
from Dr. Porter's latest revised unabridged Webster, means, " spe- 
cifically composed of States which retain only a subordinate and 
limited sovereignty, as the Union of the United States and the 
Sonderbund of Switzerland." Again, the boy asks his father, a 
sturdy old Democrat of forty years standing. What is the mean- 
ing of the word " Whig ? " Whereupon the father promptly re- 



36 State vs. Parental Education. 

plies that Whig is the name of a once formidable rival of the Dem- 
ocratic Party, which ceased its career in 1853. But the teacher 
turns to his modernized Webster and reads that a Whig means one 
of a political party in the United States from about 1829 to 1853, 
opposed in politics to the so-called Democrats. Thus giving the 
boy to understand that his father's claim to Democracy is a mere 
sham ; that in calling himself a Democrat, he is simply stealing a 
name to which he has no title. These are just a few specimens of 
words id the latest editions of Webster, with either changed or 
suppressed definitions, taken from a long list of words similarly 
dealt with, which appeared some time ago in the New York Free- 
man's Journal. A comparison of the old with the latest editions 
of Webster, will show that these late editions have not been mis- 
represented. 

It is thus that those who wield the immense engine of our pub- 
lic school system are permitted, by means of the books they use, 
to poison at the very fountain-head the English language itself, 
the very channel through which our children are destined to re- 
ceive not only their ideas of government, but every other species 
of knowledge. 

I might thus run through the whole vocabulary of political 
terms, as they are defined in the latest edition of Webster's Dic- 
tionary, " so-called," and show you that the book is most intensely 
partisan. It is a base libel on its original illustrious author, and 
directly at war with all the ideas of our Government entertained 
by its wise and patriotic founders. 

It is thus that thousands of parents, without even suspecting 
the fact, are paying their school taxes for the purpose of teaching 
their children to despise their own most cherished political prin- 
ciples. 

But our public school histories are sometimes no better than our 
dictionaries. In proof of this, allow me to quote for you a few 
short passages from an edition of Lossing's Primary United States 
History, a book extensively used in the public schools of San 
Francisco for years after the close of the late war. It may be said 
that this edition of Lossing's History is not now in use in that city, 
and perhaps it is not, but who can say that the infernal poison of 
sectional hatred which it instilled into the children of that city is 
not still gnawing at the vitals of society. When this book was in 
use I well remember the denunciations which were heaped on your 



State vs. Parental Education. S7 

humble servant, and how he was assailed as an enemy to educa- 
tion, because of his daring to expose the villainous lies therein re- 
corded. But listen to our historian. In pretending to narrate as 
an historical truth, the cause of the late civil war, Lossing, on page 
222 says : " Men in the slave States determined to bring negroes 
from Africa again, and to fill some of the new Territories with 
them. The people of the free States declared that they should do 
no such thing." 

And here follows some wholesome historical knowledge for the 
benefit of our anti-Mongolian friends of the Workingmen's Party 
The author goes on to say : " Bitter quarrels were kept up. They 
were stopped for a little while, when great men from Japan, and 
a lad (the Prince of Wales) came here in 1860 to visit our Presi- 
dent. As soon as they were gone the old quarrel was resumed." 
You will understand me, that this is history that I am quoting. 
Genuine non-sectarian common school history. They were these 
great men from Japan — these Mongolian half-brothers of our much 
abused John Chinaman, whose august presence hushed to silence 
the ominous mutterings of war, and preserved the peace of the 
country. " But as soon as they were gone," says our public school 
historian, " the old quarrel was resumed." Again, on page 237, 
this intelligent historian, alluding to the assassination of President 
Lincoln, says : " While all the loyal people were rejoicing, because 
the war had so ended. President Lincoln, one of the best men that 
ever lived, was cruelly murdered in Washington, by a young man 
hired by the Confederates to do the wicked deed." 

And this is the kind of stuff they were teaching in the public 
schools of San Francisco at the very time when your State Super- 
intendent of Public Instruction boastfully declared, as we have 
seen, that now " we have a course of study established by law, 
by means of which teachers are enabled to pursue an intelligent 
system of instruction in spite of the prejudices of parents who 
are too ignorant to comprehend the purpose of a school." 

Should the father of a public school pupil tell his child, while 
studying these books, that the history he is using is a tissue of 
ridiculous falsehoods, that the alleged* cause of the late war is a 
simple fabrication ; that the presence or the absence of these great 
men from Japan had nothing whatever to do with the fostering 
or retarding our terrible civil strife, and that the pretended histor- 
ical fact about the Confederates having hired Booth to aasassinate 



38 State vs. Parental Education. 

Lincoln is a base libel on a brave and heroic people ; and should 
lie tell him that the dictionary from which he is studying the 
English language is poisoned with false and partisan definitions 
of the very words in which are couched both the history and 
Constitution of our country, what, I ask, would be the effect pro- 
duced on the mind and heart of the child by means of this conflict 
between his home-training and his public school training ? 
Would he probably take sides with the author, or with his own 
father ? On the one hand, the book says it is thus and so, and so 
says the teacher, so says the whole school, and so says the whole 
State, because this book is taught by State authority ; while on 
the other hand, it is only his poor, ignorant old fogy of a father 
who denies what is in the book ; and what does he know about 
modern history, or the latest edition of Webster's unabridged ? 

After all, he would conclude, "I do not think the old man 
honestly believes what he himself says ; for if so, why does he 
send me right back to the same school to study again the same 
books which he tells me are filled with falsehoods ?" Thus the 
boy reasons himself into the belief that his own father is either a 
knave or a fool, and perhaps a compound of both. 

But suppose that instead of a question of politics or of history, 
we take a religious question as the point of difference. Suppose that 
the father and mother, being of a religious turn of mind, hold to 
the doctrine that in the earliest training of their child the religious 
principle, just as they themselves understood religion, should be 
kept constantly before the infant mind and be directly and inti- 
mately associated with every step it takes in its educational 
course. Suppose that these parents religiously and conscientiously 
believe that the temporal and eternal happiness, both of them- 
selves and their children, depends, in a great measure, upon the 
teaching of religion and science together at the same time, in the 
same connection, and in a manner showing the relations between 
natural science and revealed religion ; and suppose that they re- 
peatedly proclaim these their honest convictions, sitting at the 
fireside amidst the family circle ; and then, suppose that at school 
all these parental ideas are ignored, contemned and set at naught 
in obedience to the behests of our great non-religious sect, and the 
child is taught that these parental ideas are silly, antiquated 
notions, unworthy of a free, intelligent and enlightened mind, and 
that they must either be abandoned or else made to work for those 



State vs. Parental Education. 39 

who hold them a forfeiture of all interest in the public school 
funds. Now, who does not know that this conflict between paren- 
tal and public school training must of necessity produce in the 
mind of the child a contempt either for his parents or his public 
school teachers ? And in nine cases out of ten it is the parent that 
loses and the public school teacher that gains the confidence and 
esteem of the child. 

And no sooner does the child cease to love and respect its parents 
than it ceases also to obey their commands. Thence come the 
destruction of parental authority, the utter wreck and ruin of the 
family government, and in lieu thereof arise domestic feuds, ani- 
mosities, bickerings and strifes, until finding neither peace nor 
pleasure at home, the chances are that children thus educated will 
betake themselves to drinking saloons, gambling hells, or other 
haunts of vice. Hence come idleness, drunkenness, gambling^ 
debauchery, lying, cheating, fraud, embezzlement, forgery, burglary, 
robbery, murder, and all the endless catalogue of crimes against 
the laws of both God and man, thus demonstrating the truth 
proclaimed by Dr. Wayland, where he says " the relaxation of 
parental authority has always been found one of the surest indica- 
tions of the decline of social order, and the unfailing precursor of 
public turbulence and anarchy." — 

It too often happens, with young ladies, too, educated in these 
institutions, that they learn at school to despise the very name of 
mother. Not, perhaps, by direct teaching in words, but by indi- 
rect teaching, and by a conflict of ideas and principles, and an 
incessant conflict of jurisdiction. So that finally, when entering 
upon their matrimonial career, when they come to consider the 
hardships, sickness and sacrifices incident to bearing and rearing 
children, and when they further contemplate the cold-hearted 
ingratitude with which these sacrifices are likely to be requited 
they shrink from the thought of becoming mothers. Hence it is 
that so many modern devices are resorted to by married women 
to prevent the birth of children. So very common has this dia- 
bolical device become in some of those localities where this public 
school system has longest held sway, that the original object 
of marriage seems to have been almost lost sight of, and men and 
women marry, not for the purpose of raising up children, but 
solely for the purposes of speculation, or the gratification of the 
animal appetites. The marriage relation has thus finally come to 



40 State vs. Pakental Education. 

i be regarded as no more than a mere co-partnership, to be dissolved 
I at the pleasure of either party, just so soon as he or she can find 
I another partner with more cash, or one supposed to possess more 
I congenial affinities. Hence, I charge upon your anti-parental and 
i godless school system the alarming increase of divorce suits that 
crowd our Court calendars. I charge upon that system the turn- 
ing adrift upon society, to become hoodlums, paupers and felons^ 
thousands of helpless waifs, the fruits of these unfortunate 
concubinages, unworthy to be dignified with the sacred name of 
marriages. I charge upon that system the breaking asunder of 
the sacred ties of love and afiection between parents and children, 
the tearing down of family government, the crowding of our 
jails and penitentiaries with beardless boys, the turning loose 
upon society of an army of official and non-official embezzlers 
and thieves, who have astounded the world by the nnmber and 
enormity of their gigantic robberies, perpetrated with impunity 
upon the property, the rights and the liberties of our people. I 
charge upon that system the scattering broadcast of the seeds of 
anarchy, discord and Communism throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. And finally, I charge that this system has 
been the means of unfitting American youths for the industrial 
pursuits, prepared the way and opened wide the door to flood this 
? country with the degraded hordes of Asia. 

"""To our non-partisan friends who profess such a holy horror of 
Communism, I would say, is not our whole public school system 
one vast Communistic machine ? If a majority of voters have a 
right to take the money of a protesting minority, and use it to 
educate the children of parents who are abundantly able to edu- 
cate them themselves, can you tell me why that same majority 
may not, with just as much right and propriety, take from the 
minority still more money with which to buy victuals and clothes, 
to purchase lands, and to build and furnish houses for both parents 
and children ? Will j'-ou tell me it is the duty of grown-up people 
to feed and clothe and iiouse themselves and their children, and 
that therefore it would be wrong to tax the community for that 
purpose ? Then I answer, it is no more the duty of grown-up 
people to feed and clothe, and house themselves and their children, 
than it is to give to their children a proper education. And who, 
I ask, while calling himself a friend of education, will dare deny 
this proposition ? If your neighbors have a right by a majority 



State vs. Parental Education. 41 

vote to take your money against your will to pay for teaching 
your neighbor's daughter to play on the piano while she is only a 
little girl, will you tell me why they may not, with at least an 
equal right, when she grows to womanhood, take stiU more of 
your money with which to purchase a piano for her to play upon ? 
Where is the use of her knowing how to play on the piano if she 
have no piano to play upon ? In fact, I maintain that the second 
investment would be more necessary than the first; upon the 
same principle that the man who has never accustomed himself 
to the use of tobacco can easily dispense with that luxury, but 
the habit of chewing having been once formed, it is next to 
impossible to restrain it. 

Who can deny that the constant tendency of our present com- 
munistic system of public schools is to engender and stimulate 
in the minds and hearts of the great mass of our country's youth 
appetites, tastes, habits and aspirations, which, without a still 
further application of the doctrine of Communism, they have not 
the means to gratify. And who can wonder, if Communism be 
made to supply the wants which Communism, has itself engen- 
dered ? If you feed a boy upon appetizers until his hunger grows 
ravenous beyond endurance, and then deny him anythino- to eat 
what wonder if he takes your victuals without your leave ? 

Besides being a species of pure and unadulterated communism 
practically enforced by legislative enactment, this public school 
system has moreover, as already intimated, become the great ally 
of the Mongolian hordes who are overrunning our youno- State. 
And now for the proof. We have already seen how in Massa- 
chusetts, under the influence of this system, the natural increase 
of the native population has dwindled down to about one-third 
what it formerly was ; and like causes are producing like results 
in California. Then again, out of all those children who are per- 
mitted by their parents to be born into the world, if you take 
those raised in our towns and cities, it is safe to say that of all 
the boys and girls being educated in our public schools, not one 
in ten expects, after leaving school, to earn his or her livino- by 
ordinary manual labor. And who can wonder at this, while out 
of its communistic school fund the State is educating every child 
to become, at its option, either a politician, a lawyer, a doctor a 
merchant, or at least a public school teacher ? Who is going to be 
willing to do the hard and dirty work of life, laboring ten hours 



42 State vs. Paeental Education. 

a day for thirty, forty, or sixty dollars a month, when he may 
just as well be at least a school teacher, and for just half the time 
at lighter work get from three to six times as much pay ? 

: Perhaps you will say, they cannot all find employment at these 
/easy and lucrative occupations, and some of them will have to go 
/ to work. But experience shows that as a rule your city-raised 
'i public school children will not go to work. They neither desire 
to work, nor do they know how to work. Having been educated 
at the expense of the State by teachers employed and paid by the 
State — in school houses built by the State — should they after- 
wards go to work, it is very much to be feared that it will be in 
mansions belonging to the State, under other bosses appointed by 
the State, and when wearing a felon's uniform furnished at the 
expense of the State. 

- Then, who is so blind as not to see that as long as this anti- 
parental sect controls the education of our youth, we can have 
no sufficient supply of home-made laborers ? On account of the 
unwelcome presence of the Chinamen already here, foreign immi- 
gration to the States of the Pacific has almost entirely ceased, 
and many of our laborers, both Americans and Europeans, are for 
the same cause beginning to seek for homes elsewhere. So, if you 
are, by constitutional enactment, going to perpetuate this mon- 
strous system of mis-education, which destroys before birth two- 
thirds of our children, and ruins after birth the larger part of the 
remainder, who, let me ask, is going to do the work ? Who will 
mold the brick, carry the hod, build the houses, shovel the sand, 
grade your railroads, dig your sewers ? Who will tUl your gar- 
dens, your vineyards, and your farms? Who will drive your 
teams, wash your clothes, and cook your victuals? All this, and 
manual labor of a thousand other kinds, has to be done, and who 
— I repeat — is going to do it ? 

The answer is easy: over-crowded Asia stands by with four 
hundred and twenty -five millions of her sooty sons, ready and 
anxious to fill the places, which of right belongs to your murdered 
children. Yes, I repeat it, your murdered children! Children 
murdered in their very conception; children murdered in their 
mother's womb, and children worse than murdered in their educa- 
tion. With all my opposition, however, to the present public 
school systeiTi, I would not leave a single child in all this broad 
land deprived of the means of an education, and an education suited 



State vs. Paeental Education. 43 

as nearly as possible to its destined situation and calling in life. 
And I would, if necessary, make it by the State law, just as it is 
by the natural law, the duty of parents having the ability so to 
do, to educate their own children. And in case the parent were 
too poor to pay for their education, I would require him to select 
for himself, either a religious school or a non-religious school; 
either a school with the Bible, or a school without the Bible, just 
as he might think best; and I would let the State pay the school 
or the teacher thus selected, for giving such children a good ordi- 
nary English education. Aye, more, I would by Constitutional 
provision prohibit the State Legislature from compelling the parent 
of any child against his own judgment and conscience to send such 
child to a relio-ious school on the one hand, or to a non-religious 
school on the other, as a condition upon which the child should 
receive State aid. But if this is not to be the rule; if parents aa 
parents have no rights in so sacred a matter as the education of 
their own children which a majority of voters are bound to respect, 
then suppose public sentiment should one of these days take a 
change, and a majority of the people should come to beheve that 
religious public schools are better than non-religious ones, would 
not a majority of voters so beheving have just exactly the same 
right to force the children of non-religious parents into religious 
schools, and compel them to study the religion of the majority 
against the j udgments and consciences of their non-religious parents, 
that non-rehgionists now have to force upon them just exactly the 
same kind of wrong ? And if not, then why not ? 

Then who, let me ask, is the bigoted sectarian of whom we have 
heard so many and such bitter complaints ? Is it your humble 
servant, who is in favor of protecting every parent in the land, 
whether Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or infidel, in his natural, inalien- 
able right to direct and control the education of his own child, just 
exactly as he pleases, at his own expense if he is able, and at the 
expense of the public, if he is not able ? Or is it the man who 
would force every child in the State, nolens volens, to, be educated 
according to his own standard, without regard to the judgment 
and conscience of its own father and mother ? Who, I repeat, is 
the hide-bound and narrow-minded bigot whose doctrines are dan- 
gerous to the liberties of the people ? Is it the man who is in 
favor of granting to every other man, irrespective- of creed or 
party, the same freedom of thought and of action which he claims 



44 State vs. Parental Education. 

for himself, or is it the man who would force his neighbors to either 
think and act as he thinks and acts, or else make them suffer for 
their refusal to do so, by compelling them to pay twice for educa- 
ting their children, if able, or by leaving those children to grow up 
in ignorance, if unable ? I pause for a reply. 

If this infamous doctrine — that in the matter of education the 
State is everything and the parent nothing — is to be permanently 
fastened on the country, it would not be surprising if the time 
should yet come when the humble individual now before you should 
feel it his bounden duty to assist in protecting, against the assaults 
of this hideous monster of intolerance, some of its own progenitors. 
Much stranger things have happened in the vicissitudes of the 
world's history. 

In one of the sections of a porposed Constitution framed by one 
of the delegates to our Constitutional Convention, it is proposed, 
in effect, to deny all State aid for the education of any child attend- 
ing a religious school. While in another section it is proposed to 
teach to all the pupils of our public schools the State Constitution 
embracing this clause, discriminating so invidiously in favor of 
non-religious as against religious education, and along with that 
George Washington's Farewell Address. 

Now suppose you require both of these documents to be taugh* 
in the public schools; and suppose a boy of ordinary intelligence 
first reads that portion of Washington's Farewell Address wherein 
the Father of his Country declares that " of all the dispositions and 
habits that lead to 'political prosperity, religion and morality ar© 
indispensable supports," and the man would " in vain claim the 
tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars 
of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and 
citizens." And then suppose the same boy next turns to an article 
in your State Constitution reading something like this: "And be 
it ordained, that the California State Government shall never, 
either directly or indirectly, aid by its money or credit to the ex- 
tent of one farthing, in the education of any child or children, 
either rich or poor, in any school wherein any religion whatever 
is taught. 

'And be it further ordained that the State shall gather school 
taxes from all its citizens, religionists and non-religionists — ^from 
those who believe in none but religious schools, and those who be- 
lieve in none but non-religious schools for their children, and with 



State vs. Parental Education. 45 

the taxes thus gathered^ the State shall establish non-religioug 
schools exclusively, from which all religious teaching shall be rigidly 
excluded, and all parents shall either educate their children in these 
non-religious schools, or else forfeit all moneys paid by them into 
the school fund. 

"And be it further ordained that in cases where parents are too 
Poor to educate their children at their own expense, and cannot, 
without a violation of conscience, send them to such non-religious 
schools as the State furnishes, such parents shall be required by the 
law to either stifle their consciences, or else let their children grow 
up in ignorance." 

After reading both this State Constitution and Washington's 
Farewell Address, what would a school boy think of either the 
consistency or the patriotism of our conventional solons, who after 
having by the endorsement of Washington's Farewell Address, pro- 
claimed religion to be the great pillar of human happiness, had 
then deliberately gone to work and knocked down that pillar? If, 
then, our Constitutional Convention is resolved to make a Consti- 
tution proscribing all religious education, and if it is going to re- 
quire all public school children to study that Constitution, then, in 
the name of consistency, it is to be hoped that it will not require 
those same children to study Washington's Farewell Address, a 
document which stands as one of the most withering rebukes ever 
administered to this very spirit of religious proscription. 

I believe that no man, either dead or alive, either in this State 
or out of it, is or ever has been more uncompromisingly opposed to 
the black and blighting curse of the Chinese invasion, which, for 
the last quarter of a century and more, has desolated, impoverished 
and ruined our young State; that no man, living or dead, has la- 
bored harder, travelled further, said or written more to check the 
onward progress of this gigantic evil, than has, in his humble 
way, the individual who now addresses you. And yet, with a 
full knowledge of the direful fruits of this monstrous curse, should 
this Convention send forth to the country a Constitution in every 
other respect iust such as is most desired touching this Chinese 
question, and at the same time a Constitution striking down the 
sacred, eternal, inalienable and God-given right of parents to direct 
and control the education of their own children according to the 
dictates of their own consciences, whether such education be witi>\ 
or without State aid, I, for one, should feel it a duty to myself, a I 



4<G State vs. Paeental Education. 

duty to my children, a duty to my country, and a duty to my God, 
to battle against such a Constitution as I would battle against an 
invading army, threatening by fire and sword the extermination of 
ourpeople. 

"'^^'^ NOTE OF EXPLANATION. 

As explanatory of the Senate Chamber business referred to in 
the foregoing speech, it may be proper to state the following facts: 
On the afternoon of Monday, November 18th, Hon. Daniel Inman, 
of Alameda County, introduced a resolution in the Convention, 
tendering to the undersigned the use of the Assembly Chamber 
(the one used by the Constitutional Convention) in which to deliver 
an address on the school question. The resolution was adopted by 
quite a handsome majority, whereupon a member who had voted 
with the minority invoked one of the rules of the Convention, 
requiring a unanimous vote of all the delegates present to allow 
the Chamber to be used for any purpose except the business of the 
Convention. The Chair ruled the point well taken, and no doubt 
ruled properly. On Tuesday morning Hon. N. G. Wyatt and my- 
self called upon the Secretary of State, who, it was understood, had 
the general management and control of the Senate Chamber, with 
the view of securing its use for the purpose above indicated. The 
Secretary very courteously and unqualifiedly acceded to the 
request, suggesting at the same time that we see the Sergeant-at- 
4.rms and have him put the hall in proper order to receive an 
ludience. This was done, and the Sergeant-at-Arms promised to 
have everything in good shape at the appointed time. Notice was 
duly given of the proposed address in both the Sacramento dailies, 
and up to about the middle of the afternoon of Wednesday there 
was no apparent reason to the outside looker-on why the Secretary 
of State might not keep his promise. But about four o'clock P. M., 
I met the Secretary of State in the main hall of the Capitol, in 
conversation with one of the San Francisco Delegates, when, turn- 
ing to me, he began to apologize for his inability to let me have the 
Senate Hall, as he had promised; and said that the San Francisco 
Delegation were going to hold a meeting there at seven o'clock; 
that the entire Capitol building was under the control of the Con- 
vention, and that he could not afford to put himself in antagonism 
with the Convention. The San Francisco Delegate referred to here 
remarked that the meeting to be held that night by the San Fran- 
cisco Delegates was simply a Workingmen's club meeting, that 
they did not claim their right to the Senate Hall from the Con- 
vention, but were only there by the courtesy of the Secretary of 
State. He knew that this was one of their regular days of meet- 
ing, but under the cii-cumstances he thought my claims to the hall 
should take precedence of theirs. Shortly after this a number of 
the San Francisco Delegates, together with the Secretary of State 



State vs. Parental Education. 47 

and myself, were in the rooms of the Sergeant-at-Arms discussing 
the Secretary's embarrassing predicament, when one of the San 
Francisco Delegates started for the Convention Hall, remarking 
that he would see some one (whose name I did not understand) 
and see if this matter could not be adjusted in some way. Just as 
this gentleman started out, the Secretary called out to him and 
said, "And see Casserly, too." This was altogether a new character 
introduced into the play, but one which I thought gave the key to 
the entire plot. It was the first time that I had ever dreamed that 
Mr. Casserly was running the Workingmen's Party. Soon after 
it was authoritatively announced to me that the Workingmen had 
withdrawn all claim to the Senate Chamber, and that the coast 
was now clear. But it was not stated whether Mr. Casserly had 
been consulted or not. In the meantime, the Secretary of State 
had endeavored to avoid all responsibility in the premises by saying 
and repeating that the Senate Chamber was under the control of 
the Convention, and the key was in the hands of the Sergeant-at- 
Arms. But the Sergeant-at-Arms assured me most positively — 
and I am fully persuaded that he spoke the truth — that he had not 
the key, and had never had it, but that it was either in the hands 
of the Secretary of State, or his man, the Janitor. 

Nor did the Secretary attempt to deny that the Janitor had the 
key, after being told what the Sergeant-at-Arms had said. The 
Sergeant-at-Arms, however, said he thought he could get the key 
from the man in possession of it, and he would have the hall all 
lighted and ready by seven o'clock. With this assurance I left the 
Capitol about half-past five P. M., to get ready for my speech. At 
seven I returned, found the Senate Chamber locked and no light in 
it, and the people already beginning to crowd the main hall of the 
building. The Sergeant-at-Arms said that on applying to the 
Janitor for the key, he remarked that somebody had stolen it! 
" But," said the Sergeant, " I have not the least doubt that he could 
get the key in five minutes' time if he wished to." In the mean- 
time a large portion of the delegates had reached the hall, amongst 
whom were many of my personal friends and old acquaintances, 
some of them of more than a quarter of a century's standing. As 
might have been expected, no little indignation was manifested by 
the crowd because of this disreputable, not to say exceedingly con- 
temptible, means thus resorted to for the purpose of keeping me 
out of the hall. A number of delegates then proceeded to the 
rooms of the Committee on Education and made known the situa- 
tion, whereupon the Committee adjourned to the Assembly Cham- 
ber for the purpose of hearing what I had to say on the school 
question. The crowd followed the Committee, and I was accorded 
a most patient, courteous and attentive hearing. As far as I have 
been able to learn, the only opposition to my speaking came from 
some persons who professed to believe that my speech on the school 



48 State vs. Parental Education. 

question would somehow or other injure the cause of the orphans. 
Indeed, the Secretary of State seemed to make no secret of so 
stating, both to the friends and foes of the anti-orphan clause which 
it is proposed to engraft on the Constitution. But how these So- 
lons expected to aid the orphans by means of rendering themselves 
contemptible in the eyes of all respectable people, it is a little diffi- 
cult for a plain man not used to politics to fully understand. 

My own fears have been that the indignation of some of the 
members, caused by this outrage upon common decency, and this 
gross and most uncalled-for insult, offered to an old friend, might 
tend to confound in the minds of some of them the noble cause of 
the orphans with the miserable trickery which has been resorted 
to at least with the ostensible purpose of serving them. It should, 
however, be remembered that it would be exceedingly unjust to 
visit upon poor, helpless, and fatherless children the folly and wick- 
edness of all those who claim to be their friends. And such is the 
view that I sincerely hope will be taken of the matter by every 
genuine friend of humanity. 

Z. Montgomery 



The friends of educational reform throughout the State of Cal- 
ifornia are requested to exert themselves in obtaining signatures to 
the following petition, for which purpose copies of the petition will 
be sent gratis to any person desiring it, by addressing a request to 
that effect to Z. Montgomery, Oakland, Cal. 

PETITION 

TO THE HONORABLE SENATE AND ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF 

CALIFORNIA. 
W e, the undersigned, citizens and voters of the State of Califor- 
nia, without regard to political or religious differences, respectfully 
petition your honorable bodies to pass a law for the taking of the 
sense of the voters of this State, at the next general election, touch- 
ing the propriety of so amending Article IX of our State Consti- 
tution, as to make it substantially conform to the following propo- 
sitions ; such vote when so taken to have no other legal effect than 
to indicate the deliberate judgment of the people, and thus serve 
as a guide for future action in the premises : — 

PROPOSITIONS. - 

I. 

Parents are bound, by the law of Nature, (each according to his 
ability) to properly feed, clothe, and educate their own children, 
and unwilling parents shall be compelled, by appropriate legisla- 
tion, to discharge these duties. 



State vs. Parental Education. 49 

II. 

It is a public duty to assist, at public expense, in furnishing the 
necessary means wherewith to properly feed, clothe, and educate 
children whose parents are unable to so feed, clothe, and educate 
them. 

III. 

No citizen of this State shall ever be taxed for the feeding, cloth- 
ing, or educating of children — not his own — whose parents are am- 
ply able to feed, clothe, and educate them. 

IV. 

All such parents as are neither mentally nor morally unfit to 
have the custody of children are entitled, and in duty bound, to 
select for the education of their own children schools wherein they 
believe that neither the teachers, the associations, nor the kind of 
instruction given will seriously endanger either their health, their 
lives or their morals, but will best promote their temporal and 
eternal welfare. 

V. 

Neither the State, nor any municipal or other government or- 
ganized under its authority, shall ever force upon the child of any 
parent — not legally adjudged mentally or morally unfit to discharge 
the duties of the parental oflice — any particular teacher, book, or 
system of religious or non-religious instruction against the consci- 
entious objections of such parent. 

VI. 

Tuition, when at public expense, shall embrace a good common 
English and business education, added to such a thorough training 
in one or more of the mechanic arts, or the manufacturing, domes- 
tic or productive industries, as will best prepare youth for the prac- 
tical business of self-sup[iort, but shall not extend to the merely 
ornamental or more abstruse arts or sciences, except in a limited 
class of cases (to be provided for by law) as a reward for exalted 
merit, when coupled with a high order of talent anJ a special ap- 
titude for such arts or sciences. 

VII. 

The whole business of educating and training the young shall, 
like other professions, be open to private enterprise and free com- 
petition ; 'provided that the State shall establish and maintain such 
necessary educational institutions as private enterprise shall fail 
to establish and maintain ; and every parent or guardian entitled 
to have his or her child or ward educated at the public expense, 
shall select for such purpose his own school, and the teacher or 
principal of such school shall be paid periodically for teaching such 
pupil a compensation, the maximum of which shall be fixed by 
law, which compensation shall be proportionate to the progress 
made by the pupil during such period 0£ tuition in the legally ap- 



50 State vs. Parental Education. 

pointed secular branches. Said progress to be ascertained by ex- 
aminers duly elected or appointed in such manner as may be pro- 
vided by law ; but no religious tuition which may be given in any 
such school shall beat pubnc expense or subject to the supervision 
of said examiners. 



HOW INTELLIGENT CITIZENS OF ALL CLASSES REGARD THE AEOVE 

PROPOSITIONS. 

The friends and opponents of the foregoing propositions held a 
meeting in the city of Oakland on the evening of Oct. 6, 1879, for 
the purpose of considering their merits. In referring to that meet- 
ing and its action touching said propositions, a leading Oakland 
daily, the Evening Tribune in its issue of Oct. 10 among other 
things says, "A large audience gathered Jast Monday evening, at 
the old Congregational Church building, to hear the Hon. Zach. 
Montgomery discuss the demerits of the Public School System of 
the United States. It was generally expected and hoped that the 
Rev. Ploratio Stebbins, D. D., of San Francisco, would be present 
and take issue with the views advanced by Mr. Montgomery, but 
the reverend gentleman did not put in an appearance. Fred. M. 
Campbell, State Superintendent-elect, at the request of Mr. Mont- 
gomery, presided. ... In support of the two principal opin- 
ions, namely, the pernicious influence of our present system of pub- 
lic instruction, and the right and duty of the pai-ent to select and 
control the education of the child, as well as clothe and feed it, he 
advanced seven propositions, which, if carried out practically, he 
believed, would prove vastly superior to the present system. He 
was frequently plied with questions, put by persons in the audience, 
to which he responded with alacrity. A vote v/as taken on the 
several propositions advanced by Mr. Montgomery, to ascertain 
the sense of the audience in regard to the subject, and invariably 
the result showed that the speaker was sustained by a majority 
of his hearers." 



PACIFIC PRESS 

PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPEllS. 

OAKLAND, CAL. 



